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Xhis book shoidd be re tut nod on or before the date 
last marked below. 



THE LONDON OF DICKENS 



The London of 
Dickens 



BY 

WALTER DEXTER 




LONDON 

CECIL PALMER 

49 CHANDOS STREET, COVENT GARDEN, 



FIR ST 

EDITION 
1923 
COPY- 

RJ GHT 

SECOND 
EDITION 
1924 



rnmea tn &w&~Bfttain by Burleigh Ltd. at the 
Burleigh Press, Bristol 



TO 
MY WIFE 



PREFACE 

THIS is a book for the fireside, or the deck-chair ; 
the main road or the side street. 

In its company the reader can review in fancy or 
in reality the London sites and scenes made famous 
by Dickens in the pages of his immortal stories. 
Dickens himself has leit on record a list of books, 
" the glorious host/' that kept him company in the 
dull sad days of his childhood. " They kept alive 
my fancy, and my hope of something beyond that 
place and time " he tells us. " Every barn in the 
neighbourhood, every stone in the church, and every 
foot of the churchyard, had some association of its 
own, in my mind, connected with the books, and 
stood for some locality made famous in them. I 
have seen Tom Pipes go climbing up the church 
steeple ; I have watched Strap, with knapsack on 
his back, stopping to rest himself upon the wicket- 
gate ; and I know that Commodore Trunnion held 
that club with Mr. Pickle, in the parlour of our little 
village ale-house." 

Thus did the books he read appeal to Dickens ; 
and Dickens in his turn has so kept alive pur fancy 
by his own books that rambles and pilgrimages to 
places associated with him and his stories are a 
regular feature with the various branches of the 
Dickens Fellowship, with literary societies and 
rambling clubs and with overseas visitors who 
desire to see the site of Garraway's Coffee House, 
from which Mr. Pickwick indited his famous Chops 
and Tomata Sauce epistle to Mrs. Bardell ; to see 
the remains of the Marshalsea Prison, and the church 



I am both a town traveller and a country traveller, and am 
always on the road. Figuratively speaking, I travel for the 
great house of Human Interest Brothers, and have rather a 
large connection in the fancy goods way. Literally speaking, 
I am always wandering here and there from my rooms in Co vent 
Garden, London now about the city streets, now about the 
country by-roads seeing many little things, and some great 
things, which, because they interest me, I think may interest 
others. 

(The Uncommercial Traveller.) 



Mr. Jonas enquired in the first instance if they were good 
walkers, and being answered "Yes," submitted their pedestrian 
powers to a pretty severe test ; for he showed them as many sights 
in the way of bndges, churches, streets, outsides of theatres, and 
other free spectacles, in that one forenoon, as most people see 
in a twelvemonth. It was observable in this gentleman that he 
had an insurmountable distaste to the msides of buildings ; and 
that he was perfectly acquainted with the merits of all shows, 
in respect of which there was any charge for admission, which 
it seemed were every one detestable, and of the very lowest 
grade of merit. 

(Martin Chuzzlewit.) 



CONTENTS 

ROUTE , PAGE 

1. LEGAL LAND 13 

Doughty Street to The Temple. 

2. BLOOMSBURY TO THE BANK 36 

3. UP AND DOWN THE ClTY ROAD - - ^ - 59 

The Bank to Islington. 

4. THE NORTHERN HEIGHTS 73 

Islington to Hampstead. 

5. COVENT GARDEN TO EUSTON - 81 

6. YOUTHFUL HAUNTS 98 

Euston to Camden Town. 

7. THE DICKENS WAY HOME - no 

Blackfriars to the Monument. 

8. THE DOVER ROAD 131 

Westminster to Greenwich. 

9. ROUND THE SQUARES. I. - 147 

Doughty Street to Oxford Circus. 

10. ROUND THE SQUARES. II. 158 

Leicester Square to Hyde Park Corner. 

11. PICCADILLY TO PARLIAMENT - 171 

Hyde Park Corner to Westminster. 

12. WESTWARD 186 

Hyde Park Corner to Twickenham. 

13. DOWN THE STRAND AND FLEET STREET - 190* 

Trafalgar Square to St. Paul's. 

14. A CITY ROUNDABOUT 217 

The Bank to the Tower and return. 

15. EASTWARD UNCOMMERCIALLY - - - 236 

Aldgate to Limehouse. 

INDEX TO PLACES 257 

ii 



THESE fifteen rambles cover the whole of Dickens s 
London. 

The most important quotations from the works of 
Dickens are given in the text, but at the end of each 
route will be found a full list of references, with book 
and chapter quoted, to which the reader can refer. 

With the exception of Routes 4, 8, 12 and 15, each 
ramble is so arranged as to be accomplished comfortably 
in about two hours. Routes 4, 8 and 12 make somewhat 
longer afternoon trips in conjunction with tram-car or 
omnibus. 

The following routes can be linked together if so 
desired : 



Routes i and 13. 

Routes 2 and 14. 
Routes 3 and 4. 

Routes 5 and 6. 
Routes 7 and 14. 
Routes 9 and 10. 
Routes ii and 8. 

Routes 13 and 14. 



Doughty Street to the Temple, 

Strand, Fleet Street. 
Bloomsbury to the Bank and City. 

Bank to Islington, Highgate and 
Hampstead. 

Covent Garden to Camden Town. 
Blackfriars, Borough and the City. 
The Squares of the West End. 

Hyde Park to Westminster and 
Greenwich. 

Trafalgar Square to St. Paul's and 
the City. 



The London of Dickens 
ROUTE ONE 

LEGAL LAND 

(DOUGHTY STREET TO THE TEMPLE) 

DICKENS'S gallery of lawyers is not by any means 
the least engrossing of the many types he has 
created for us ; and, strangely enough, there is 
hardly a lawyer in that extensive list who had not 
his location in the legal district that runs from 
Doughty Street to the Thames Embankment. 
Dodson & Fogg, Sampson Brass and Mr. Jaggers 
are almost the only exceptions, and, outside London, 
we can but call to mind the case of Wickfield & 
Keep. 

The undoubted reason for the predominance of 
description given by Dickens to his legal characters 
is that from his very earliest days the power of the 
law had a really great meaning to him ; his first 
occupation as a lad on leaving school was as office 
boy to a firm of solicitors in Lincoln's Inn, where his 
fancy must have been given free flight in the grass- 
centred squares, in the trim gardens of the Temple 
and Lincoln's Inn, in the subdued grey and red 
buildings, in the quaint Halls, the quainter and more 
secluded nooks and corners, in the narrow winding 
staircases, the little small-paned windows, and the 
deep and silent recesses. As a young man he occu- 

13 



14 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

pied chambers in one of the old inns, FurnivaTs, 
and at the age of twenty-seven actually entered his 
name as a student of Middle Temple but he was 
never " called." 

To commence our exploration of the London of 
Dickens and his works, there is no finer way imagin- 
able than to take a stroll through the Inns of Court 
to the Temple ; its secluded ways are unknown to 
many Londoners and are a side-light on the many 
beauties the great city possesses that are as foreign 
climes even to those people who pass and repass 
its very portals day after day ; the great thorough- 
fares of Holborn, Fleet Street and the Strand run 
through its centre ; Theobald's Road and the Thames 
Embankment flank its farthest sides. Truly, as 
we shall see, entering these regions of repose is akin 
to putting cotton wool in our ears, as Dickens has 
likened it, so contrasting is the bustle of the street 
without with the silence reigning within. 

Doughty Street, the Dickens Mecca, on the out- 
skirts of Dickens's legal land, is an excellent starting 
point. It was the first house rented by Dickens 
after his marriage, and here he lived from 1837 to 
1839. Here Pickwick Papers was finished, Oliver 
Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, and Barnaby Rudge 
written. 

Doughty Street leads into John Street, at the end 
of which Theobald's Road runs right and left. 

On our left lies Gray's Inn Road, the place of 

residence of Mr. Mortimer (otherwise Wilkins 

Micawber), and in Little Dorrit we are told that 

Mr. Casby lived in a street in the Gray's Inn 

Road, which had set off from that thoroughfare 

with the intention of running at one heat down 

into the valley and up again to the top of Penton- 

yille Hill : but which had run itself out of breath 

in twenty yards, and had stood still ever since. 

There is no such place in that part now. 



LEGAL LAND 15 

The continuation of Gray's Inn Road on the right, 
leading into Holborn, was formerly called Gray's 
Inn Lane, and is briefly mentioned in Pickwick and 
one or two of the other books. 

Before turning into Gray's Inn there is a little 
detour worth making : strictly speaking it is only 
partly legal, but it is necessary nevertheless, although 
it can be omitted from this ramble or included in 
Route Two. By the side of Holborn Hall at right 
angles to Gray's Inn Road runs Clerkenwell Road. 
Leather Lane on the right figures in the account 
of the riots in Barnaby Rudge. 

The second turning to the right is Hatton Garden 
(see also Route Two), where at No. 54 was the " very 
notorious Metropolitan Police Office," presided over 
by Mr. Fang : in reality it was the Hatton Garden 
Police Court, and a Mr. A. S. Laing was one of the 
magistrates there between 1836 and 1838. Oliver 
was brought here, " down a place called Mutton 
Hill, where he was led beneath a low archway and 
up a dirty court into this dispensary of summary 
justice, by the back way. It was a small paved 
yard into which they turned." 

If we turn in at Hatton Wall we shall find the 
archway mentioned above, next a tavern, leading 
to a narrow passage called Hatton Yard parallel 
with the backs of the houses in Hatton Garden. This 
way, too, came Nancy, at the request of Fagin, 
tapping at the cell doors with her keys in the endea- 
vour to trace Oliver. The backs of the houses have 
now been built over. No. 54 itself is the original 
building, although newly faced. 

The Jellybys, in Bleak House, once lived in 
lodgings in Hatton Garden : 

When Mr. Jellyby came home, he usually 
groaned and went down into the kitchen. There 
he got something to eat, if the servant would give 
him anything ; and then, feeling that he was in 



16 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

the way, went out and walked about Hatton 
Garden in the wet. 

Mutton Hill is now known as Vine Street. Here 
is Field Lane Ragged School, in which Dickens 
took a great interest. 

Further along Clerkenwell Road we reach Clerken- 
well Green. It was near here that Mr. Brownlow 
was considered by Master Charley Bates to be "a 
prime plant " as he was attentively reading a book 
at a stall outside a shop. In Chapter X of 
Oliver Twist we are told : 

They were just emerging from a narrow court 
not far from the open square in Clerkenwell, 
which is yet called, by some strange perversion of 
terms, "The Green/' 

The court in question is said to be Pear Tree 
Court. 

It was to the Clerkenwell Sessions House that 
Bumble was bound when he announced to Mrs. 
Mann he was going up to London. " And I very 
much question whether the Clerkenwell Sessions will 
not find themselves in the wrong box before they 
have done with me," said Mr. Bumble, drawing 
himself up proudly. 

As in the days of Barnaby Rudge so it is now : 
there are " busy trades in Clerkenwell and working 
jewellers by scores." Then, Dickens tells us "it 
was a poorer place with farm-houses nearer to it 
than many modern Londoners would readily be- 
lieve, and lovers' walks at no great distance, which 
turned into squalid courts long before the lovers 
of this age were born." 

In the venerable suburb it was a suburb 
once of Clerkenwell, towards that part of its 
confines which is nearest to the Charterhouse, 
and in one of those cool, shady streets of which a 
few ... yet remain, 
lived that honest locksmith, Gabriel Varden, at 



LEGAL LAND 17 

a house not over-newly fashioned, not very 
straight, not large, not tall, not bold faced with 
great staring windows, but a shy, blinking 
house, with a conical roof going up into a peak 
over its garret window of four small panes of 
glass, liked a cocked hat on the head of an elderly 
gentleman with an eye. ... A great wooden 
emblem of a key, painted in vivid yellow to 
resemble gold, dangled from the house front, 
and swung to and fro with a mournful "creaking 
noise, as if complaining that it had nothing 
to unlock. 

Mr. Jarvis Lorry, in A Tale of Two Cities, " walked 
along the sunny streets from Clerkenwell, where he 
lived, on his way to dine with the Doctor " (Dr, 
Manette, who lived near Soho Square) ; and Mr. Venus, 
so we are told in Our Mutual Friend, lived in " a 
narrow and a dirty street " in Clerkenwell, at a 
little dark, greasy shop with a dark window with one 
tallow candle dimly burning in it, where he was 
visited by Silas Wegg, who " being on his road to 
the Roman Empire approaches it by way of Clerken- 
well." 

We now return to Theobald's Road, pass Gray's 
Inn Road, and find on our left the spacious gardens 
of Gray's Inn, where Flora, in her second wooing of 
Arthur Clennam, " considered nothing so improbable 
as that he ever walked on the north-west side of Gray's 
Inn Gardens at exactly four o'clock in the afternoon." 
We pass along the gardens and turn in at the gate- 
way on the left, by the side of Raymond Buildings, 
where at No. i Dickens was a clerk to a firm of 
solicitors in 1827. 

Beyond is Gray's Inn Square, where Mr. Perker 
had his chambers up " two pairs of steep and dirty 
stairs." 

The " old 'ooman " who opened the door to Mr. 
Pickwick and Sam called herself " Mr. Perker's 

B 



i8 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

laundress," which gave rise to the following amusing 
conversation : 

" Ah," said Mr. Pickwick, half-aside to Sam, 
" it's a curious circumstance, Sam, that they call 
the old women in these inns laundresses. I 
wonder what's that for ? " 

" 'Cos they has a mortal awersion to washing 
anythin', I suppose, sir," replied Mr. Weller. 

" I shouldn't wonder," said Mr. Pickwick, 
looking at the old woman, whose appearance, 
as well as the condition of the office, which she 
had by this time opened, indicated a rooted 
antipathy to the application of soap and water. 
" Gray's Inn, gentlemen. Curious little nooks 
in a great place like London these old inns are." 
So said Mr. Pickwick. Of a later visit of Mr. Pick- 
wick we read : 

Ten o'clock had not struck when he reached 
Gray's Inn. 

It still wanted ten minutes to the hour when he 
had ascended the staircase on which Perker's 
chambers were. The clerks had not arrived yet, 
and he beguiled the time by looking out of the 
staircase window. 

The healthy light of a fine October morning 
made even the dingy old houses brighten up a 
little, some of the dusty windows actually 
looking almost cheerful as the sun's rays gleamed 
upon them. Clerk after clerk hastened into the 
square by one or other of the entrances, and, 
looking up at the Hall clock, accelerated or 
decreased his rate of walking according to the 
time at which his office hours nominally com- 
menced. 

Gray's Inn has a great attraction, and belies the 
later description given of it in the Uncommercial 
Traveller as 

the most depressing institution in brick and 



LEGAL LAND 19 

mortar known to the children of men. Can 
anything be more dreary than its arid square 
Sahara Desert of the law, with the ugly old 
tiled-topped tenements, the dirty windows, the 
bills To Let, To I^et, the door-posts inscribed 
like gravestones. 

There has evidently been a change for the better 
since that day. 

Passing through the archway of Gray's Inn Hall, 
we reach South Square, where Mr. Phunlcy had 
chambers. " Phunky's Holborn Court, Gray's Inn." 
Holborn Court, by the by, is South Square now. 

Trad dies' address was " Holborn Court, sir, 
number two," where he " occupied a set of chambers 
on the top storey," and when David visited him he 
had to ascend " a crazy old staircase . . . feebly 
lighted on each landing by a club-headed little oil 
wick, dying away in a little dungeon of dirty glass. 
In the course of my stumbling upstairs," he tells 
us, "I put my foot in a hole where the Honourable 
Society of Gray's Inn had left a plank deficient." 

His subsequent reception by his old friend 
Traddles, by Sophy and all the Devonshire beauties 
(who had been playing Puss in the Corner), was, 
however, a sufficient recompense. 

Gray's Inn Gateway, referred to in Pickwick, 
leads into Holborn, where we turn left, passing the 
site of Gray's Inn Coffee House, at which David 
Copperfield stayed when visiting Traddles at his 
chambers. 

His bedroom, he tells us, was " an old wainscoted 
apartment, over the archway leading to the inn," 
and here he dwelt on the pleasure his visit had given 
him. " If I had beheld a thousand roses in a top 
set of chambers in that withered Gray's Inn, they 
could not have brightened it half so much," he 
adds. 
With Holborn and the site of Furnival's Inn (now 



20 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

the Prudential Assurance Company's Offices on the 
left) we deal in Route Two. 

Opposite the southern end of Gray's Inn Road 
we see on the right a little group of picturesque 
houses, behind which lies Staple Inn, thus described 
in Edwin Drood : 

Behind the most ancient part of Holborn, 
London, where certain gabled houses some 
centuries of age still stand looking on the public 
way, as if disconsolately looking for the Old 
Bourne that has long run dry, is a little nook 
composed of two irregular quadrangles, called 
Staple Inn. It is one of those nooks the turning 
into which out of the clashing street imparts to 
the relieved pedestrian the sensation of having 
put cotton in his ears and velvet soles on his 
boots. 

Entering the gateway we find ourselves in a veri- 
table oasis : 

It is one of those nooks where a few 
smoky sparrows twitter in the smoky trees, 
as though they called to one another, " Let 
us play at country/' and where a few feet 
of garden mould and a few yards of gravel 
enable them to do that refreshing violence to 
their tiny understandings. Moreover, it is one 
of those nooks which are legal nooks ; and it 
contains a little hall, with a little lantern in its 
roof : to what obstructive purposes devoted, 
and at whose expense, this history knoweth 
not. 

It was Mr. Snagsby, we remember, who, " being 
in his way rather a meditative and poetical 
man," delighted to walk in Staple Inn " to ob- 
serve how countrified the sparrows and the leaves 
are." 

Beyond the first courtyard is another, containing 
the Hall of the Inn, and the house on the left 



LEGAL LAND 21 

presenting in black and white over its ugly 
portal the mysterious inscription : 

P. 
J. T. 

1747 

In which set of chambers, never having troubled 
his head about the inscription, unless to bethink 
himself at odd times on glancing up at it that 
haply it might mean Perhaps John Thomas, 
or Perhaps Joe Tyler, sat Mr. Grewgious writing 
by his fire. 

Here, too, was the scene of the " Magic Beanstalk 
Country " at Mr. Tartar's chambers : 

" The top set in the house next the top set 
in the corner, the neatest, cleanest and best- 
ordered chambers ever seen under the sun, 
moon and stars. No man-of-war was ever kept 
more spick and span from careless touch." 
And there was a neat awning " rigged over Mr. 
Tartar's flower garden, as only a sailor could 
rig it." 

The other side of the Inn leads into Chancery 
Lane, where we turn to the left. 

Chancery Lane figures largely in the novels. Mr. 
Pickwick went there on his way to the Fleet : 
John Rokesmith first saw Mr. Boffin there. " Old 
Tom Jarndyce in despair blew his brains out at a 
coffee house in Chancery Lane," and Mrs. Snagsby 
was " the high standard of comparison among the 
neighbouring wives a long way down Chancery 
Lane on both sides." Young Smallweed had " a 
passion for a lady at a cigar shop " here, and Mr. 
Bucket remarked to Esther that, " It looks like 
Chancery Lane and was christened so." Indeed 
Bleak House is the novel of Chancery Lane. 

In Cursitor Street on the left is Took's Court, the 
original of Cook's Court. 

On the eastern borders of Chancery Lane, 



22 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

that is to say more particularly in Cook's Court, 
Cursitor Street, Mr. Snagsby, law stationer, 
pursues his lawful calling. In the shade of Cook's 
Court, at most times a shady place, Mr. Snagsby 
has dealt in all sorts of blank forms of legal 
process ; in skins and rolls of parchment ; in 
paper foolscap, brief, draft, brown, white, 
whity-brown, and blotting ; in stamps, in 
office quills, pens, ink, India-rubber, pounce, 
pins, pencils, sealing-wax and wafers ; in red 
tape and green ferret ; in pocket-books, alman- 
acks, diaries and law lists ; in string boxes, 
rulers, ink-stands glass and leaden penknives, 
scissors, bodkins and other small office cutlery. 
Of Mrs. Snagsby's own domain, the drawing- 
room, we are told : 

The view it commands of Cook's Court at one 
end (not to mention a squint into Cursitor 
Street) and of Coavinses', the sheriff's officer's 
back yard at the other, she regards as a prospect 
of unequalled beauty. The portraits it displays 
in oil and plenty of it too of Mr. Snagsby 
looking at Mrs. Snagsby and of Mrs. Snagsby 
looking at Mr. Snagsby, are in her eyes as 
achievements of Raphael or Titian. 
Cursitor Street itself sheltered Coavinses and his 
Castle. 

Symond's Inn stood a little lower down on the 
site of Bream's Buildings 

Symond's Inn, Chancery Lane : a little, pale, 
wall-eyed, woe-begone inn, like a large dust-bin 
of two compartments and a sifter. It looks as 
if Symond were a sparing man in his way, and 
constructed his Inn of old building materials, 
which took kindly to the dry rot and to dirt 
and all things decaying and dismal, and perpetu- 
ated Symond's memory with congenial shabbi- 
ness. Quartered in this dingy hatchment com- 



LEGAL LAND 23 

memorative of Symond, are the legal bearings of 
Mr. Vholes. 

Behind was Rolls Yard and Chapel, where also 
Mr. Snagsby loved " to lounge about of a Saturday 
afternoon, and to remark (if in good spirits) that 
there were old times once." 

Opposite Rolls Passage is Chichester Rents, at 
the corner of which stood the Old Ship Tavern, the 
original of Sol's Arms famous for its Harmonic 
Meetings and its inquests. Krook's Rag and Bottle 
Warehouse stood in Chichester Rents ; " blinded by 
the wall of Lincoln's Inn," and the " little side gate " 
and " narrow back street " (Star Yard), mentioned 
in Chapter V of Bleak House, are easily identified. 
One of the lodgers at Krook's shop was Miss Flite, 
who " lived at the top ot the house in a pretty large 
room, from which she had a glimpse of the roof of 
Lincoln's Inn Hall." 

Returning to Chancery Lane and retracing our 
steps, we reach Lincoln's Inn Gateway, thus described 
by Esther : 

We passed into sudden quietude under an old 
gateway and drove on through a silent square 
until we came to an odd nook in a corner, where 
there was an entrance up a steep, broad, flight 
of stairs like an entrance to a church. And 
there really was a churchyard, outside, under 
some cloisters, for I saw the gravestones from 
the staircase windows. 

Lincoln's Inn Hall opposite us was the scene of the 
memorable trial of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce. 

In Lincoln's Inn Hall, at the very heart of the 
fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High 
Court of Chancery. 

The Chapel, with gravestones underneath, is on 
the right, and a passage by the side leads to Old 
Square, in which Kenge & Carboy had their 
offices, wher6 Mr. Guppy used to take a breath of 



24 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

air at the window and look out " into the shade of 
Old Square, surveying the intolerable brick and 
mortar." Here Serjeant Snubbin had chambers 
and was " impossible to be seen such a thing was 
never heard of, without a consultation fee being 
previously paid." 

At No. 8 New Square, Dickens was employed 
by Mr. Molloy as a clerk for a short time in 1827. 

Lincoln's Inn Fields lie beyond us ; somewhere 
hereabouts David Copperfield's aunt, being in mortal 
dread of fire, took lodgings for a week " at a kind of 
private hotel in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where there was 
a stone staircase and a convenient door in the roof." 
On the far side of the Fields is No. 58, the house of 
Dickens's friend and biographer, John Forster. 
This was the original of Mr. Tulkinghorn's house 
in Bleak House. 

Here, in a large house, formerly a house of 
state, lives Mr. Tulkinghorn. It is let off in 
sets of chambers now ; and, in those shrunken 
fragments of its greatness, lawyers lie like mag- 
gots in nuts. But its roomy staircases, passages 
and ante-chambers, still remain ; and even its 
painted ceilings, where Allegory, in Roman 
helmet and celestial linen, sprawls among balus- 
trades and pillars, flowers, clouds, and big-legged 
boys, and makes the head ache as would seem 
to be Allegory's object always, more or less. 
Here, among his many boxes labelled with tran- 
scendent names, lives Mr. Tulkinghorn, when not 
speechlessly at home in country-houses where 
the great ones of the earth are bored to death. 
Here he is to-day quiet at his table. An oyster 
of the old school, whom nobody can open. 
Here it was that Dickens was a frequent visitor, 
and here he read The Chimes in 1844 to a select 
circle of friends, before its publication, coming from 
Italy specially for the purpose. 



LEGAL LAND 25 

Turning to the left from No. 58, and proceeding 
along the northern side of the Fields, we reach 
Portsmouth Street, and on the left a quaint and 
picturesque piece of Old London, inaccurately des- 
cribed as " The Old Curiosity Shop, immortalised by 
Charles Dickens/' 

At the corner of Portugal Street is the George 
IV Tavern, on the site of the original " Magpie 
and Stump " of Pickwick. The Insolvent Court and 
the " Horse and Groom " public-house, were both in 
Portugal Street ; the latter is no longer in existence ; 
it was the scene of the meeting of the two Wellers 
with Mr. Solomon Pell. 

Through Carey Street we reach Bell Yard, altered 
out of all knowledge since the day when it was a 
narrow alley where the Neckett children lived 
over the chandler's shop. At the end of Bell Yard 
is Temple Bar, dividing Fleet Street from the Strand 
(see Route Thirteen). 

Crossing Fleet Street we reach Middle Temple 
Gate, mindful that it was Hugh in Barnaby Rudge 
who likewise crossed the road here for the purpose of 
visiting Sir John Chester, and " plied the knocker 
of Middle Temple Gate/' only to be regarded sus- 
piciously and told, " We don't sell beer here." 

It was also at Middle Temple Gate that Mr. Fips 
arranged the meeting with Tom Pinch which led to 
his engagement at the mysterious chambers, of which 
we make mention later. 

What is probably the best description of the charm 
of the Temple is to be found in Barnaby Rudge : 

There are still worse places than the Temple 
on a sultry day, for basking in the sun or resting 
idly in the shade. There is yet a drowsiness 
in its courts and a dreamy dullness in its trees 
and gardens. Those who pace its lanes and 
squares may yet hear the echoes of their footsteps 
on the sounding stones and read upon its gates 



26 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

in passing from the tumult of the Strand or Fleet 
Street, " Who enters here leaves noise behind." 
There is yet in the Temple something of a clerkly 
monkish atmosphere, which public offices of law 
have not disturbed and even legal firms have 
failed to scare away. In summer time, its 
pumps suggest to thirsty idlers springs cooler 
and more sparkling and deeper than other wells 
. . . and, sighing, they cast sad looks towards 
the Thames and think of baths and boats, and 
saunter on, despondent. 
In Pickwick we have the following description of 

the chambers of the Temple : 

Scattered about, in various holes and corners 
of the Temple, are certain dark and dirty cham- 
bers. . . . These sequestered nooks are the 
public offices of the legal profession, where 
writs are issued, judgments signed, declarations 
filed, and numerous other ingenious machines 
put in motion for the torture and torment of 
His Majesty's liege subjects, and the comfort 
and emolument of the practitioners of the law. 
They are, for the most part, low-roofed, mouldy 
rooms, where innumerable rolls of parchment, 
which have been perspiring in secret for the last 
century, send forth an agreeable odour, which 
is mingled by day with the scent of the dry rot, 
and by night with the various exhalations which 
arise from damp cloaks, festering umbrellas, 
and the coarsest tallow candles. 
The same chapter gives an interesting account of 

lawyers' clerks, which is worth repeating here : 

There are several grades of lawyers' clerks. 
There is the articled clerk, who has paid a pre- 
mium, and is an attorney in prospective, who 
runs a tailor's bill, receives invitations to parties, 
knows a family in Gower Street, and another in 
Tavistock Square ; who goes out of town every 



LEGAL LAND 27 

Long Vacation to see his father, who keeps live 

horses innumerable ; and who is, in short, the 

very aristocrat of clerks. There is the salaried 

clerk out of door, or in door, as the case may 

be who devotes the major part of his thirty 

shillings a week to his personal pleasure and 

adornment, repairs half-price to the Adelphi 

Theatre at least three times a week, dissipates 

majestically at the cider cellars afterwards, and 

is a dirty caricature of the fashion which expired 

six months ago. There is the middle-aged 

copying clerk, with a large family, who is always 

shabby, and often drunk. And there are the 

office lads in their first surtouts, who feel a 

befitting contempt for boys at day-schools : 

club as they go home at night, for saveloys and 

porter : and think there's nothing like " life." 

Passing through Brick Court and Essex Court 

we reach Fountain Court, where, as is said in 

Barnaby Rudge, " There is still the plash of falling 

water in fair Fountain Court" ; but it is in Martin 

Chuzzlewit that Dickens has made a romance for us 

round Fountain Court and its association with Ruth 

Pinch, her brother Tom, and John Westlock. 

There was a little plot between them that Tom 
should always come out of the Temple by one 
way ; and that was past the fountain. Coming 
through Fountain Court, he was just to glance 
down the steps leading into Garden Court, and to 
look once all round him ; and, if Ruth had come 
to meet him, there he would see her ; not saunter- 
ing, you understand (on account of the clerks), 
but coming briskly up, with the best little laugh 
upon her face that ever played in opposition to 
the fountain, and beat it all to nothing. . . . 
Either she was a little too soon, or Tom was a 
little too late she was so precise in general 
that she timed it to half a minute but no Tom 



28 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

was there. Well ! But was anybody else there, 
that she blushed so deeply, after looking round, 
and tripped off down the steps with such unusual 
expedition ? 

Why, the fact is that Mr. Westlock was passing 
at that moment. The Temple is a public 
thoroughfare ; they may write up on the gates 
that it is not, but so long as the gates are left 
open it is, and will be ; and Mr. Westlock had 
as good a right to be there as anybody else. . . . 

Merrily the tiny fountain played, and merrily 
the dimples sparkled on its sunny face. John 
Westlock hurried after her. Softly the whisper- 
ing water broke and fell ; and roguishly the 
dimples twinkled, as he stole upon her foot- 
steps. . . . 

" I felt sure it was you/' said John, when he 
overtook her, in the sanctuary of Garden Court. 
" I knew I couldn't be mistaken/' 

She was so surprised. 

" You are waiting for your brother/' said John. 
" Let me bear you company." . . . 

Merrily the fountain plashed and plashed, 
until the dimples, merging into one another, 
swelled into a general smile that covered the 
whole surface of the basin. . . . 
On a later occasion we are again introduced to 
Fountain Court : 

Brilliantly the Temple Fountain sparkled in 
the sun, and laughingly its liquid music played, 
and merrily the idle drops of water danced and 
danced, and, peeping out in sport among the 
trees, plunged lightly down to hide themselves, 
as little Ruth and her companion came towards 
it. 

And why they came towards the Fountain 
at all is a mystery ; for they had no business 
there. It was not in their way. It was quite 



LEGAL LAND 29 

out of their way. They had no more to do with 
the Fountain, bless you, than they had with 
with Love, or any out-of-the-way thing of that 
sort. 

It was all very well for Tom and his sister to 
make appointments by the Fountain, but that 
was quite another affair. Because, of course, 
when she had to wait a minute or two, it would 
have been very awkward for her to have had to 
wait in any but a tolerably quiet spot ; "but that 
was as quiet a spot, everything considered, 
as they could choose. But when she had John 
Westlock to take care of her, and was going 
home with her arm in his (home being in a differ- 
ent direction altogether), their coming anywhere 
near that Fountain was quite extraordinary. 

However, there they found themselves. And 
another extraordinary part of the matter was, 
that they seemed to have come there by a silent 
understanding. Yet, when they got there, they 
were a little confused by being there, which was 
the strangest part of all ; because there is nothing 
naturally confusing in a Fountain. We all 
know that. 

What a good old place it was ! John said 
with quite an earnest affection for it. 

" A pleasant place indeed," said little Ruth. 
" So shady ! " 

O wicked little Ruth ! 

They came to a stop when John began to 
praise it. The day was exquisite ; and, stopping 
at all, it was quite natural nothing could be 
more so that they should glance down Garden 
Court ; because Garden Court ends in the Garden, 
and the Garden ends in the River, and that 
glimpse is very bright and fresh and shining on 
a summer's day. Then, oh, little Ruth, why not 
look boldly at it ! Why fit that tiny, precious, 



30 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

blessed little foot into the cracked corner of an 
insensible old flagstone in the pavement ; and 
be so very anxious to adjust it to a nicety ! 
Pip in Great Expectations had his t chambers at 
" the top of the last house in Garden Court 
down by the river. . . . Alterations have been 
made in that part of the Temple since that time, 
and it has not now so lonely a character as it had 
then, nor is it so exposed to the river." 

Here it was that Magwitch revealed himself one 
stormy night, as the source of the great expectations. 
Facing the river, we turn left to Middle Temple 
Lane and cross it, passing through Elm Court, 
and Pump Court, the court " more quiet and more 
gloomy than the rest/' where Tom Pinch was 
employed so mysteriously by Mr. Fips. 

There was a ghostly air about these uninhabited 
chambers in the Temple, and attending every 
circumstance of Tom's employment there, which 
had a strange charm in it. ... It seemed to 
Tom, every morning, that he approached this 
ghostly mist, and became enveloped in it, by 
the easiest succession of degrees imaginable. 
Passing from the roar and rattle of the streets 
into the quiet court-yards of the Temple was the 
first preparation. Every echo of his footsteps 
sounded to him like a sound from the old walls 
and pavements, wanting language to relate the 
histories of the dim, dismal rooms ; to tell him 
what lost documents were decaying in forgotten 
corners of the shut-up cellars ... to whisper 
of dark bins of rare old wine, bricked up in vaults 
among the old foundations of the Halls ; or 
mutter in a lower tone yet darker legends of the 
cross-legged knights whose marble effigies were 
in the church. With the first planting of his 
foot upon the staircase of his dusty office, all 
these mysteries increased ; until, ascending step 



LEGAL LAND 31 

by step, as Tom ascended, they attained their 

full growth in the solitary labours of the day. 

Descending the steps on the right beneath the 

Dining Hall of the Inner Temple, we reach Paper 

Buildings, where Sir John Chester had his chambers. 

Paper Buildings a row of goodly tenements, 

shaded in front by ancient trees, and looking 

at the back upon the Temple Gardens. . . . 

Through the half-opened window the Temple 

Garden looks green and pleasant; the placid 

river, gay with boat and barge and dimpled with 

the plash of many an oar, sparkles in the distance. 

The original Paper Buildings were destroyed by 

fire in 1838. 

Opposite is King's Bench Walk, dedicated to the 
memory of Sydney Carton, who " turned into the 
Temple, and, having revived himself by twice 
pacing the pavement of King's Bench Walk and 
Paper Buildings, turned into the Stryver Chambers." 
The Walk leads down to the River, where once 
were Temple Stairs, where Mr. Tartar kept his boat 
and from which he rowed Rosa and Mr. Grewgious 
up the river. This landing-place also figures in 
Great Expectations, during the exploit of Pip and 
Herbert on the river as a prelude to getting Mag- 
witch out of the country. 

Returning along King's Bench Walk we find 
Whitefriars Gate on the right, through which Pip 
came one eventful evening. 

" My readiest access to the Temple was close 
by the riverside, through Whitefriars. . . . 
It seldom happened that I came in at that 
Whitefriars Gate after the Temple was closed.' 1 
Here, by the light of the night-porter's lantern, 
he read Wemmick's message, superscribed " Please 
read this here," containing the laconic instructions, 
" Don't go home." 
This way came Mr. George in Bleak House, " by 



32 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

the cloisterly Temple and by Whitefriars " to the 
Bagnets in Blackfriars ; and this way, too, went 
Rogue Riderhood, after seeing " Governors Both " 
in the Temple. 

The waterside character pulled his drowned 
cap over his ears with both hands, and . . . 
went down the stairs round by Temple Church, 
across the Temple, into Whitefriars and so on 
by the waterside streets. 

Reversing the steps of Rogue Riderhood we pass 
Paper Buildings and under the Inner Temple Dining 
Hall and so reach Temple Church. Beyond are the 
churchyard and Goldsmith Buildings, the latter 
built on the site of the old chambers occupied by 
Mortimer Lightwood in Our Mutual Friend. 

Whosoever had gone out of Fleet Street into 
the Temple . . . until he stumbled on a dismal 
churchyard and had looked up at the dismal 
windows commanding that churchyard, until at 
the most dismal window of them all he saw a 
dismal boy, would in him have beheld . . . the 
managing clerk, junior clerk, common law clerk, 
conveyancing clerk, chancery clerk ... of 
Mr. Mortimer Lightwood 

Through Inner Temple Gate, where Mr. Dolls, 
in one of his usual maudlin conditions, was con- 
ducted by Eugene Wrayburn, we reach Fleet Street, 
opposite Chancery Lane. Here it was that Bradley 
Headstone used to rest " in a doorway with his eyes 
upon the Temple Gate," waiting and watching for 
Eugene Wrayburn. " For anything I know he 
watches at the Temple Gate all night/' said Eugene. 



ITINERARY AND REFERENCES 
ROUTE ONE 



DOUGHTY STREET TO THE TEMPLE 



Doughty Street 

No. 48, Dickens lived 1837-9 

Gray's Inn Road 

Dorrit, I, 13 
Copperfield, 36 

Gray's Inn Lane 

Pickwick, 47 

Uncommercial, 14 

Twist, 42 

Sketches, Dancing, Theatres 

Reprinted, Inspector 

Verulam Buildings 
Uncommercial, 14 

Leather Lane 

Barnaby, 68 

Hatton Garden 

Bleak House, 30, 26 
Reprinted, Bill-sticking 
Twist, ii 
Sketches, Christening 

Hatton Yard 

Twist, ii 

Vine Street (formerly Mutton 
Hill) 

Twist, ii 
Life 

Clerkenwell Square 
Twist, 10 

Clerkenwell Sessions House 

Twist, 17 

Clerkenwell 
Twist, 10 



Two Cities, II, 6 
Mutual, I, 7 
Bleak House, 26 
Barnaby, 66, 4 

Charterhouse 

Barnaby, 4 

Gray's Inn Gardens 

Dorrit, I, 13 

Bedford Row 

Uncommercial, 14 
Sketches, Scenes, 16 

Raymond Buildings, Gray's Inn 

Life 

Field Court 

Uncommercial 14 

Gray's Inn Square 
Uncommercial, 14 
Pickwick, 53 
Sketches, Steam Ex. 

Gray's Inn 

Pickwick, 20, 53 
Uncommercial, 14 

South Square (formerly Holborn 
Court) 

Pickwick, 31 
Copperfield, 59 

Gray's Inn Hall 

Pickwick, 53 
Copperfield, 59 

Gray's Inn Gateway 

Pickwick, 47 



33 



34 



THE LONDON OF DICKENS 



Gray's Inn Coffee House 

Copperfield, 59 
Curiosity, 37 

Holborn 

See Route 2 

Staple Inn 

Drood, ii 
Bleak House, 10 
Uncommercial, 14 

Chancery Lane 

Sketches, Streets 

Pickwick, 40 

Mutual, I, 8 

Bleak House, i, 10, 32, 20, 51, 

59 
Reprinted, Bill-sticking 

Quality Court 

Bleak House, 8 

Cursitor Street 

Sketches, Bounce 

Tootle 

Bleak, 10, 15, 25 
Reprinted, Bill-sticking 

look's Court 

Bleak House, 10 

Symond's Inn (site) 
Bleak House, 39, 51 

Rolls Yard 
Bleak House, 10 

Chichester Rents 

Bleak House, 5, 20, 33 

Sol's Arms (site of) 

Bleak House, 11, 33, 20 

Lincoln's Inn Gateway 

Bleak House, 3 

Lincoln's Inn Chapel 

Bleak House, 3 

Lincoln's Inn Hall 
Bleak House, i, 19 



Old Square 

Bleak House, 20, 3 
Pickwick, 31 

Lincoln's Inn 

Bleak House, 19, 20, 3, i 
Uncommercial, 14 

New Square 
Life 

Lincoln's Inn Gardens 

Bleak House, 10 

Lincoln's Inn Fields 

Copperfield, 23 

Bleak House, 10 

Barnaby, 50, 63 

Life 

Sketches, Scenes, 16 

College of Surgeons 

Bleak House, 13 
Barnaby, 75 

Sardinia Street (site of) 
Barnaby, 50. 63 

Portsmouth Street 

Curiosity, i 

George IV Tavern (Magpie and 

Stump), rebuilt 
Pickwick, 20 

Clare Market (site) 
Barnaby, 56 
Sketches, Gin Shops 
Reprinted, Lying awake 
Pickwick, 20 

New Inn 

Pickwick, 20 
Uncommercial, 14 

Portugal Street 

Pickwick, 43, 55 

Insolvent Court 

Pickwick, 43, 55 

Bell Yard 
Bleak House, 15 



LEGAL LAND 



35 



Fleet Street 

See Route 13 

Middle Temple Gate 

Barnaby, 40 
Chuzzlewit, 39 

The Temple 

Pickwick, 31, 43 
Barnaby, 15, 67 
Chuzzlewit, 40, 48 
Two Cities, II, 5, 13 
Uncommercial, 14 
Mutual, IV, 9, 10 , I, 8. 12 
Reprinted, Ghost Art. 
Bleak House, 27, 19 
Hunted Down, 5 
Holly Tree 
Clock, i 

Expectations, 39 
Sketches, Tales, 4 

Fountain Court 

Barnaby, 15 
Chuzzlewit, 45, 53 

Garden Court 

Expectations, 39, 46 
Chuzzlewit 45, 53 



Paper Buildings 

Barnaby, 15, 75 
Two Cities, II, 5 

King's Bench Walk 

Two Cities, II, 5 

Middle Temple 

Clock, i 
Hunted Down, 3 

Temple Gardens 

Barnaby, 15, 75 
Holly Tree 

Temple Stairs 

Drood, 22 
Expectations, 46 

Whitefriars Gate 

Expectations, 44 
Bleak House, 27 
Mutual, I, 12 

Goldsmiths' Buildings 

Mutual, I, 8 

Temple Church 

Mutual, I, 8, 12 



Pump Court 

Chuzzlewit 39, 40 



Inner Temple Gate 
Mutual, III, 10, n 



ROUTE TWO 
BLOOMSBURY TO THE BANK 

NEXT to the Strand and Fleet Street, Holborn may 
justly claim to be the thoroughfare that is most 
replete with Dickens memories. But a greater 
change has come over the face of Holborn than over 
the other two great arteries ; not only at the begin- 
ning and the end, Kingsway and Newgate, but also 
in the centre, and indeed almost all the way along. 

And in writing of the district of Bloomsbury and 
of, the great historic thoroughfare called Holborn, 
memories at once surround us of that part of Blooms- 
bury Wdiich housed the immortal Mrs. Gamp, and 
which was cleared away in 1905 when Kingsway 
was planned ; of the " Black Bull " in Holborn, 
where ship and Betsey Prig nursed " turn and turn 
about/' swallowed up by Carnage's premises in 
about 1^/04 i f Furnival's Inn, the birthplace of 
PickwicM, now covered by the offices of the Pru- 
dential/Assurance Company; of Snow Hill a 
name (only of the Saracen's Head whose memory 
is recorded of Field Lane, happily gone, of Holborn 
Fill, now spanned by a viaduct, and of Newgate 
Prison on the site of the present Sessions House 
at the corner of Newgate Street and Old Bailey. 

But however dear memories may be there are 
fortunately preserved to us some few relics of the 
buildings that Dickens knew, on which we can feast 
our eyes in this journey of about one mile ; and a 
few detours into the Inns Gray's Inn and Staple 

36 



BLOOMSBURY TO THE BANK 37 

Inn (Route One), and perhaps some other place or 
two a little off the route, will enable us to pass a 
short morning in this enchanted land of dreams and 
realities. 

The junction of Hart Street with High Holborn 
is our starting point, on the edge of the Bloomsbury 
district, which figured in the early sketch by Boz 
entitled The Bloomsbury Christening, the Kitterbells 
living in Great Russell Street, and the christening 
taking place at St. George's Church in Hart Street. 
Bloomsbury Square, which we pass on the left 
of Hart Street, is dealt with in Route Nine. Oppo- 
site is Southampton Street, whither came Mr. Grew- 
gious to look for a lodging for Rosa Bud. 

Mr. Grewgious's idea of looking at a furnished 
lodging was to get on the opposite side of the 
street to a house with a suitable bill in the window, 
and stare at it ; and then work his way tortuously 
to the back of the house, and stare at that ; and 
then not go in, but make similar trials of another 
house, with the same result. 
Their progress in this direction was naturally 
slow, but : 

At length he bethought himself of a widowed 

cousin, divers times removed, of Mr. Bazzard's, 

who had once solicited his influence in the lodger 

world, and who lived in Southampton Street, 

Bloomsbury Square. This lady's name, stated 

in uncompromising capitals of considerable size 

on a brass door-plate, and yet not lucidly as to 

sex or condition, was Billickin. 

As to the Billickin's terms, they are put on record 

in this inimitable fashion : 

" Five-and-forty shillings per week by the 
month certain at the time of year," said Mrs. 
Billickin, " is only reasonable to both parties. 
It is not Bond Street nor yet St. James's Palace ; 
but it is not pretended that it is. Neither is it 



38 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

attempted to be denied for why should it ? 
that the Arching leads to a mews. Mewses 
must exist. Respecting attendance : two is 
kep', at liberal wages. Words has arisen as to 
tradesmen, but dirty shoes on fresh hearth- 
stoning was attributable, and no wish for a 
commission on your orders. Coals is either by 
the fire, or per the scuttle." She emphasized 
the prepositions as marking a subtle but immense 
difference. " Dogs is not viewed with favioun 
Besides litter, they gets stole, and sharing sus- 
picions is apt to creep in, and unpleasantness 
takes place." 

The house in question was probably No. 20, next 
to the " Arching " leading to what was once a mews. 
The School of Arts and Crafts at the corner of 
Southampton Row and Theobald's Road covers the 
site of Kingsgate Street, where Mrs, Gamp lived 
over Poll Sweedlepipe's shaving establishment. 

Her name . . . was Gamp ; her residence in 
Kingsgate Street, High Holborn. . . . This 
lady lodged at a bird-fancier's, next door but one 
to the celebrated mutton-pie shop, and directly 
opposite to the original cat's meat warehouse ; 
the renown of which establishments was duly 
heralded on their respective fronts. It was a 
little house, and this was the more convenient ; 
for Mrs. Gamp being, in her highest walk of art, 
a monthly nurse, or, as her sign-board boldly 
had it, " Midwife," and lodging in the first-floor 
front, was easily assailable at night by pebbles, 
walking-sticks, and fragments of tobacco pipe ; 
all much more efficacious than the street-door 
knocker, which was so constructed as to wake the 
street with ease, and even spread alarms of fire 
in Holborn, without making the smallest im- 
pression on the premises to which it was 
addressed. 



BLOOMSBURY TO THE BANK 39 

Behind the School of Arts and Crafts is Red Lion 
Square, mentioned in Gone Astray. 

Entering High Holborn from Southampton Row, 
we turn to the left, and in a short distance notice a 
narrow turning on the right called Great Turnstile, 
and a Little Turnstile further along. Both lead 
into Lincoln's Inn Fields (see Route One) and remind 
us, as Mr. Snagsby in Bleak House used to tell his 
two apprentices, that " a brook once ran down 
Holborn, when Turnstile really was a turnstile 
leading slap away into the meadows/' Further 
along on the right we reach Chancery Lane and 
nearly opposite is the archway leading to Gray's Inn. 
Both these places are visited by Route One. Just 
beyond Gray's Inn Road is " the ancient part of 
Holborn " behind which is Staple Inn (Route One). 
Next to it is Furnival Street, formerly Castle Street, 
where Traddles lodged "up behind the parapet of a 
house." 

Next we reach on the same side Mercers' 
School in the old Barnard's Inn, brought very much 
up to date. Here Pip had chambers on first coming 
to London in preparation for his great expectations. 
Not knowing what sort of a place Barnard's Inn was, 
he was not a little surprised. 

I supposed -that establishment to be an hotel 
kept by Mr. Barnard, to which the Blue Boar 
in our town was a mere public-house. Whereas 
I now found Barnard to be a disembodied spirit 
or a fiction, and his Inn the dingiest collection 
of shabby buildings ever squeezed together in a 
rank corner as a club for tom-cats. . . . 

I was content to take a foggy view of the Inn 

through the windows' encrusting dirt, and to 

stand dolefully looking out, saying to myself 

that London was decidedly overrated. 

Adjoining Barnard's Inn were the premises of 

Thomas Langdale, a distiller, the destruction of 



40 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

whose premises by the rioters is graphically de- 
scribed in Chapter 68 of Barnaby Rudge. The side 
entrance by which the distiller and Mr. Hare 
dale entered and left the premises was in Fetter 
Lane. 

On the opposite side of Holborn is a pile of red 
brick buildings occupied by the Prudential Assurance 
Company. This covers the site of Furnival's Inn, 
where Dickens had chambers from 1834 unt ^ J 837, 
when he went to live at No. 48 Doughty Street. 

A tablet in the court-yard marks the site of 
the chambers he occupied, and a bust of Dickens 
by Mr. Percy Fitzgerald adorns the wall on the left 
as we enter. 

This is how Dickens describes the origin of 
Pickwick in the preface to that book : 

When I opened my door in Furnival's Inn to 
the partner who represented the firm, I recognised 
in him the person from whose hands I had bought, 
two or three years previously, and whom I had 
never seen before or since, my first copy of the 
magazine in which my first effusion a paper in 
the " Sketches," called Mr. Minns and his 
Cousin dropped stealthily one evening at twi- 
light, with fear and trembling, into a dark 
letter-box, in a dark office, up a dark court in 
Fleet Street appeared in all the glory of print ; 
on which occasion I walked down to Westminster 
Hall, and turned into it for half an hour, because 
my eyes were so dimmed with joy and pride that 
they could not bear the street, and were not fit 
to be seen there. I told my visitor of the 
coincidence, which we both hailed as a good 
omen ; and so fell to business. 
John Westlock, in Martin Chuzzlewit, also lived 
in Furnival's Inn, and we are told : 

There are snug chambers in those Inns where 
the bachelors live, and, for the desolate fellows 



BLOOMSBURY TO THE BANK 41 

they pretend to be, it is quite surprising how well 

they get on. ... There is little enough to see 

in Furnival's Inn. It is a shady, quiet place, 

echoing to the footsteps of the stragglers who have 

business there ; and rather monotonous and 

gloomy on summer evenings. 

The hotel that stood within the Inn (Wood's 

Hotel) was patronised by Mr. Grewgious for his 

meals, and from here to Staple Inn came that 

amusing creation, the " flying waiter/ 1 

Here, too, did Mr. Grewgious find accommodation 
for Rosa. 

Mr. Grewgious ... led her by the hand 
. . . across Holborn, and into Furnival's Inn. 
At the hotel door he confided her to the Unlimited 
head chambermaid. . . . Rosa's room was airy, 
clean, comfortable, almost gay . . . and Rosa 
tripped down the great many stairs again, to 
thank her guardian for his thoughtful and affec- 
tionate care of her. ..." You may be sure 
that the stairs are fireproof/' said Mr. Grewgious, 
" and that any outbreak of the devouring 
element would be perceived and suppressed by 
the watchmen/' 

Rosa replied she did not mean that, but re- 
ferred to Jasper. 

" There is a stout gate of iron bars to keep 
him out," said Mr. Grewgious, " and Furnival's 
is fire-proof, and specially watched and lighted, 
and / live over the way." 

Beyond the Prudential buildings is Carnage's, the 
lower end of whose premises covers the site of the 
" Black Bull " in Holborn, where Mrs. Gamp and 
Betsey Prig nursed Mr. Lewsome, as described in 
Martin Chuzzlewit. 

A little further on and we are in Holborn Circus, 
where five important roads converge. 
Ahead is Holborn Viaduct, completed in 1869, 



42 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

across the hills which made this road so notorious 
in the coaching days. 

We can, in our imagination, see Job Trotter, 
" abating nothing of his speed," running up Holborn 
Hill to Mr. Perker's at Gray's Inn ; we can see 
Wemmick, with his " such a post-office of a mouth," 
walking here with Pip, who, we are told, had got 
to the top of Holborn Hill before he " knew that it 
was merely a mechanical appearance, and that he 
was not smiling at all." We can see Oliver Twist 
trudging along here in company with Sikes en route 
for " the Chertsey crib," looking up at the clock of 
St. Andrew's Church, now half-hidden by the 
Viaduct, and being told it was " hard upon seven ! 
You must step out." This same church and clock 
are referred to in David Copperfield, when the hero 
of that story was a full quarter of an hour late by 
that clock in mustering up sufficient courage " to 
pull the private bell handle let into the left-hand 
door-post of Mr. Waterbrook's house " to see Agnes, 
after his night of dissipation. Mr. Waterbrook's 
house was in Ely Place, Holborn, a turning on the 
left of Charterhouse Street, which branches half-left 
from the Circus. 

St. Andrew's Street is on the right of Holborn 
Circus and the first turning on the right is Thavies' 
Inn, renowned for its association with Mrs. Jellyby. 
It was " no distance " from Kenge & Carboy's, 
said Mr. Guppy, "round in Thavies' Inn, you know." 
Esther did not know, so Guppy explained : 

Only round the corner. We just twist up 

Chancery Lane, and cut along Holborn, and there 

we are in four minutes' time as near as a toucher. 

So they went out into the " London particular " of 

a fog and soon 

We all ... turned up under an archway 
to our destination, a narrow street of high 
houses, like an oblong cistern to hold the fog. 



BLOOMSBURY TO THE BANK 43 

There was a confused little crowd of people, 
principally children, gathered about the house 
at which we stopped, which had a tarnished 
brass plate on the door, with the inscription, 
Jellyby. " Don't be frightened ! " said Mr. 
Guppy, looking in at the coach window. " One 
of the young Jellyby's been and got his head 
through the area railings ! " 
There sure enough we can see the houses with the 

area railings an uncommon sight in this part of 

London. Esther went to the rescue of the poor 

child, who was one of the dirtiest little unfortunates 

she ever saw. 

I ... found him very hot and frightened, 
and crying loudly, fixed by the neck between 
two iron railings, while a milkman and a beadle, 
with the kindest intentions possible, were en- 
deavouring to drag him back by the legs, under a 
general impression that his skull was compressible 
by those means. 
Returning again to Holborn Circus we cross it 

and proceed along Hatton Garden. At the far end 

is Clerkenwell (see Route One). 
Turning into Charles Street on the right, we find 

on the right all that is left of the Bleeding Heart 

Yard of Little Donit, where the Plornish family 

lived. 

As if the aspiring city had become puffed up 
in the very ground on which it stood, the ground 
had so risen about Bleeding Heart Yard that 
you got into it down a flight of steps . . . and 
got out of it by a low gate-way into a maze of 
shabby streets. ... At this end of the yard 
and over the gate-way was the factory of Daniel 
Doyce. 
The position of the yard is certainly changed 

to-day, but the above description is interesting. 
The next turning on the left is Little Saffron Hill. 



44 THE LONDON OP DICKENS 

This continues on the right of Charles Street as 
Great Saffron Hill, along which our way lies into 
Charterhouse Street. 

Along Saffron Hill from Clerkenwell came Oliver 
Twist with the Artful Dodger, on his first visit to 
London. 

From the Angel into St. John's Road . . . 
through Exmouth Street . . . thence into 
Little Saffron Hill and so into Saffron Hill the 
great. . . . When they reached the bottom of 
the hill his conductor . . . pushed open the 
door of a house near Field Lane. 
Field Lane, and with it Fagin's house, was swept 
away when Holborn Viaduct was built. Charter- 
house Street at the end of Saffron Hill cut through it, 
and it extended right into Holborn. The block of 
buildings to the left of Shoe Lane marks the site. 

Near to that spot on which Snow Hill and 
Holborn Hill meet, there opens, upon the right 
hand as you come out of the City, a narrow and 
dismal alley leading to Saffron Hill. . . . Con- 
fined as the limits of Field Lane are, it has its 
barber, its coffee-shop, its beer-shop, and its 
fried-fish warehouse. It is a commercial colony 
of itself the emporium of petty larceny ; 
visited at early morning, and setting-in of dusk, 
by silent merchants, who traffic in dark back- 
parlours, and who go as strangely as they 
come. 

In Little Saffron Hill was " The Three Cripples, 11 
the house of call of Bill Sikes and Fagin, "a low 
public-house situate in the filthiest part of Little 
Saffron Hill ; a dark and gloomy den, where a 
flaring gas-light burnt all day." 

Phil Squod in Bleak House tell us how he took on 
a travelling tinker's beat in this district : 

It wasn't much of a beat, round Saffron Hill, 
Hat ton Garden, Clerkenwell, Smiffield and 



BLOOMSBURY TO THE BANK 45 

there poor ^neighbourhood, where they uses up 
the kettles till they're past mending. 
Reaching Charterhouse Street we turn left into 
Smithfield, crossing Farringdon Road. The old 
market, with its open pens, was discontinued in 
1855, and the new building covering the site opened 
in 1868. It was quite a different place wjien Oliver 
Twist crossed it with Bill Sikes after he had been 
captured for the second time. " It was Smithfield 
they were crossing/' we read, " although it might 
have been Grosvenor Square for anything Oliver 
knew to the contrary/' and when he again crossed it 
en route for the Chertsey burglary it was market 
morning, and " the ground was covered nearly 
ankle deep with filth and mire." They crossed the 
market and went " through Hosier Lane into Hoi- 
born/' 

Smithfield Market is also referred to in Barnaby 
Rudge : 

While Newgate was burning . . . Barnaby 
and his father having passed among the crowd 
from hand to hand, stood in Smithfield, on the 
outskirts of the mob, gazing at the flames like 
men who had been suddenly aroused from 
sleep. . . . 

In a corner of the market, among the pens for 
cattle, Barnaby knelt down, and, pausing every 
now and then to pass his hand over his father's 
face, or look up to him with a smile, knocked off 
his irons. 

In Little Donit we read of Clennam and Doyce 
crossing Smithfield together but there is no de- 
scription of the market. These two parted at 
Barbican and Clennam walked on alone down Alders- 
gate to St. Paul's, when he met John Baptist, who 
had been knocked down by a mail-coach and was 
being conveyed to St. Bartholomew's Hospital. 
Later, in Great Expectations, it still kept its old 



46 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

traditions, for Pip discovered it as a " shameful 
place being all asmear with filth and fat and blood 
and foam." 

Regaining Farringdon Street, we turn to the left ; 
the first on the left is Snow Hill, which leads to 
Holborn, on reaching which we turn to the left. 

The Saracen's Head Inn, where Squeers had his 
head-quarters, was three doors from St. Sepulchre's 
Church, and was demolished in 1868. A new inn 
was erected at the foot of the hill and is now 
occupied by a warehouse and factory. The follow- 
ing is a description of the old inn from Nicholas 
Nickleby : 

Near to the jail, and by consequence near to 
Smithfield also, and the Compter, and the bustle 
and noise of the city ; and just on that particular 
part of Snow Hill where omnibus horses going 
eastward seriously think of falling down on 
purpose ; and where horses in hackney cabriolets 
going westward not unfrequently fall by accident, 
is the coach-yard of the Saracen's Head Inn ; 
its portals guarded by two Saracens' heads and 
shoulders, which it was once the pride and glory 
of the choice spirits of this metropolis to pull 
down at night. . . . The inn itself, garnished 
with another Saracen's head, frowns upon you 
from the top of the yard. 

As the building is to-day, a bust of Dickens adorns 
the door-way with plaques of scenes from Nicholas 
Nickleby connected with the older building, on 
either side. 

Close by are Cock Lane and Hosier Lane, both 
mentioned in the novels. 

Between Snow Hill and Giltspur Street is St. 
Sepulchre's Church, the clock of which heralded the 
death of many a prisoner awaiting his end at 
Newgate opposite. In Barnaby Rudge we read, 
" The concourse waited with an impatience which 



BLOOMSBURY TO THE BANK 47 

increased with every chime of St. Sepulchre's 
Church." 

The Sessions House now occupies the site of New- 
gate Prison. Writing of it in Barndby Rudge, 
Dickens refers to it as " then a new building, re- 
cently completed at a vast expense, and considered 
to be of enormous strength." To him it had a 
peculiar fascination, and several times he wrote 
of it in the Sketches by Boz, in one of which we read : 

We shall never forget the mingled feelings of 
awe and respect with which we used to gaze 
at the exterior of Newgate in our schoolboy days. 
How dreadful its rough heavy walls, and low 
massive doors, appeared to us ... then the 
fetters over the debtors' doors, which we used 
to think were a bona fide set of irons, just hung 
up there, for convenience' sake, ready to be taken 
down at a moment's notice. . . . Often have 
we strayed here, in sessions time, to catch a 
glimpse of the whipping place, and that dark 
building on one side of the yard in which is kept 
the gibbet with all its dreadful apparatus. 
Although Newgate has its principal associations 
in Barnaby Rudge, Oliver Twist, and Great Expecta- 
tions, one of the best descriptions of it is given in 
Nicholas Nickleby : 

There, at the very core of London, in the 
heart of its business and animation, in the 
midst of a whirl of noise and motion, stem- 
ming as it were the giant currents of life that 
flow unceasingly on from different quarters and 
meet beneath its walls, stands Newgate ; and, 
in that crowded street on which it frowns so 
darkly, scores of human beings, amidst a roar of 
sounds to which even the tumult of a great 
city is as nothing, four, six, or eight strong men 
at a time have been hurried violently and swiftly 
from the world, when the scene has been rendered 



48 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

frightful with excess of human life ; when curious 
eyes have glared from casement and house-top, 
and wall and pillar ; and when, in the mass of 
white and upturned faces, the dying wretch, in 
his all-comprehensive look of agony, has met 
not one not one that bore the impress of pity 
or compassion. 

The account of the burning of Newgate by the 
Gordon Rioters in Barnaby Rudge is a remarkable 
piece of writing. Lord George Gordon died in a 
cell in Newgate Prison some years after the famous 
riots but not on account of them. 

The Central Criminal Court in the Old Bailey 
adjoining Newgate Prison was the scene of some 
stirring events in the novels of Dickens : Fagin's trial 
in Oliver Twist, the trial of the returned convict, 
Magwitch, in Great Expectations, and the very 
memorable trial in A Tale of Two Cities, when 
Sydney Carton rendered such yeoman service to 
Charles Darnay. Of the street which gave the 
Court its name, Dickens writes in this book : 

The Old Bailey was famous as a kind of deadly 
inn-yard, from which pale travellers set out 
continually, in carts and coaches, on a violent 
passage into the other world. 
Kit, too, "honest Kit/' in The Old Curiosity 
Shop, suffered trial at the Old Bailey, and was con- 
fined in the cells there until released by the assistance 
of Dick Swivel] er. 

Newgate Street itself is often mentioned by 
Dickens, the most memorable occasion being in 
Pickwick, when in walking along this thoroughfare 
Sam Weller remarked to Mr. Pickwick on the date 
fixed for the trial being the I4th of February, 
" Remarkable coincidence. . . . Walentine's day, 
sir, reg'lar good day for a breach o* promise trial 
that." He then drew Mr. Pickwick's attention to 
a " wery nice pork-pie shop . . . celebrated sas- 



BLOOMSBURY TO THE BANK 49 

sage factory," he explained, and told the diverting 
history of the man owning the shop, who was made 
into sausages in his own " patent never leavin' off 
sassage steam-ingin." 

Our way now lies along Giltspur Street, in which 
the Compter mentioned on page 46 used to stand, 
close to St. Sepulchre's Church. It was a debtors' 
prison and was demolished in 1855. 

This leads to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, re- 
ferred to above, where Jack Hopkins (in Pickwick) 
was a student and Slasher the wonderful operator, 
and where the boy who swallowed the necklace was 
" wrapped in a watchman's jacket for fear of waking 
the patients." 

Mrs. Betsey Prig was described as " of Barthemy's ; 
or as some said Barklemy's, or as some said Bara- 
lemy's ; for by all these endearing and familiar 
appellations had the hospital become a household 
word." 

Keeping the hospital on our right we presently 
find St. Bartholomew's Church facing us, when we 
turn to the right, passing Bartholomew Close on our 
left, and so into Little Britain, which bears round to 
the left into Aldersgate Street. 

Mr. Jaggers had written on his card that his 
address was Little Britain, " just out of Smith- 
field, and close by the coach office," and, while 
waiting for the lawyer, Pip had been advised 
to go round the corner and take a turn in the 
air at Smithfield, but, finding it a shameful place 
and seeing " the great black dome of Saint Paul's 
bulging " at him from " behind a grim stone building, 
which a bystander said was Newgate Prison," went 
into the prison yard and saw the gallows and whip- 
ping post and the " Debtors' Door, out of which 
culprits came to be hanged." 

Returning, he " made the tour of Little Britain 
and turned into Bartholomew Close/' and at length 

P 



50 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

as he was " looking out at the iron gate of Bartholo- 
mew Close " he saw Mr. Jaggers coming towards 
him. Little Britain was described by Pip as " a 
gloomy street," and Mr. Jaggers's room as " lighted 
by a skylight only and a most dismal place ; the sky- 
light eccentrically patched like a broken head, and 
the distorted adjoining houses looking as if they had 
twisted themselves to peep down at me through 
it." 

On reaching Aldersgate Street we find across the 
road to the right the site of the Albion Hotel, where 
Dickens entertained his friends in 1839 to celebrate 
the completion of Nicholas Nickleby* 

In "a hybrid hotel in a little square behind 
Aldersgate Street, near the General Post Office," 
John Jasper stayed when in London. It is said to 
have been the Falcon Hotel, formerly in Falcon 
Square, on the right. 

Hereabouts, too, the firm of Chuzzlewit must have 
been situated : 

The old-established firm of Anthony Chuzzle- 
wit & Son, Manchester Warehousemen, and 
so forth, had its place of business in a very narrow 
street somewhere behind the Post Office ; where 
every house was in the brightest summer morn- 
ing very gloomy ; and where light porters 
watered the pavement, each before his own em- 
ployer's premises, in fantastic patterns, in the 
dog-days ; and where spruce gentlemen, with 
their hands in the pockets of symmetrical 
trousers, were always to be seen in warm weather, 
contemplating their undeniable boots in dusty 
warehouse door-ways ; which appeared to be the 
hardest work they did, except now and then 
carrying pens behind their ears. A dim, dirty, 
smoky, tumble-down, rotten old house it was 
as anybody would desire to see ; but there the 
firm of Anthony Chuzzlewit & Son transacted 



BLOOMSBURY TO THE BANK 51 

all their business, and their pleasure too, such as 
it was ; for neither the young man nor the old 
had any other residence, or any care or thought 
beyond its narrow limits. 

Turning towards St. Paul's Cathedral (Route 
Thirteen), we have the site of the old Post Office build- 
ings on the left, and the new buildings on the right 
occupying the site of the Bull and Mouth Inn, which 
must have been the halting place of the " North 
country mail-coach . . . hard by the Post Office," 
which brought John Browdie to London with his 
bride. " A Poast Office ! " he exclaimed. " Wa'at 
dost thee think o' that ? Ecod, if that's on'y a 
Poast Office, I'd loike to see where the Lord Mayor o' 
Lunnon lives ! " 

This portion of the street being called St. Martin' s- 
le-Grand recalls that from the coach-stand here 
Mr. Pickwick took the " bob's vorth " to the Golden 
Cross at Charing Cross. 

From the General Post Office we turn to the left 
into Cheapside. 

Along Cheapside rode Lord George Gordon, and, 
later, Mr. Carker on his bay horse. 

Mr. Mould, the undertaker, in Martin Chuzzlewit, 
lived hereabouts : 

Deep in the city and within the ward of Cheap 
stood Mr. Mould's establishment . . . abutting 
on a churchyard small and shady. . . . 
His premises were in a quiet corner, we are told, 
" where the city strife became a drowsy hum . , . 
suggesting to the thoughtful mind a stoppage in 
Cheapside." 

In Wood Street on the left formerly stood the 
Cross Keys Inn, at which Dickens himself arrived 
as a boy from Chatham on the family coming to 
London. 

Through all the years that have passed since, 
have I ever lost the smell of the damp straw in 



52 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

which I was packed like game and forwarded 
carriage paid to the Cross Keys, Wood Street, 
Cheapside, London ? 

Here naturally, coming also from Rochester, Pip 
arrived, and later he met Estella here when the waiter 
on being asked for a private sitting-room led them 
" to the black hole of the establishment." 

On the left of Wood Street we find Huggin Lane ; 
there is another Huggin Lane off Queen Victoria 
Street, and either one might have stood for what 
was probably the birthplace of The Pickwick Papers ; 
for in the advertisement, undoubtedly drawn up by 
Dickens himself, we are referred to " The Pickwick 
Club, so renowned in the annals of Huggin Lane/' 

The continuation of Cheapside to the Bank, past 
King Street (on the left is the Guildhall see Route 
Three) is called Poultry ; a description of the 
firing on the rioters here is given in Barnaby 
Rudge. 

Grocers' Hall Court on the left is said to be the 
place to which Sam Weller, whose " knowledge of 
London was extensive and peculiar," directed Mr. 
Pickwick for " a glass of brandy and water warm." 
Mr. Pickwick had crossed opposite the Mansion 
House and was proceeding up Cheapside when 
Sam replied, " Second court on the right-hand side 
last house but vun on the same side the vay take 
the box as stands in the first fire-place, 'cos there 
ain't no leg in the middle o' the table, vich all the 
others has, and it's wery inconwenient." 

Authorities differ as to the exact court ; some say 
Honey Court, others Freeman's Court, both in Cheap- 
side. It all depends, of course, where Mr. Pickwick 
was when Sam gave the direction ! 

We now arrive at the famous centre named the 
Bank. On the left is the Bank of England, on the 
right the Mansion House, and opposite us the Royal 
Exchange. 



BLOOMSBURY TO THE BANK 53 

" If you please, is this the city ? " enquired 
little Florence Dombey. 

" We . . . men of business. We (who) belong 
to the city," to quote old Sol Gills in the same book, 
say " yes " most emphatically, as anything west 
of St. Paul's is not quite of the city from real busi- 
ness point of view, the city proper having its centre 
in the Bank, and being bounded on the west by 
St. Paul's and on the east by Aldgate Pump. 

" Something in the city " must have had a peculiar 
fascination for Dickens, seeing the continual refer- 
ence he made to city life. It was Bob Sawyer who 
explained to Mrs. Raddle how it was he was unable 
to pay her little bill. "I'm very sorry . . . but 
the fact is that I have been disappointed in the city 
to-day" "Extra-ordinary place that city. An 
astonishing number of men always are getting 
disappointed there." 

" Every morning, with an air ever new," Herbert 
Pocket, in Great Expectations, " went into the city 
to look about him. ... I asked him in the course 
of conversation what he was ? He replied, * A 
capitalist an insurer of ships ... in the city.' " 

Mr. Tibbs whose wife kept the boarding-house 
described in Sketches by Boz " always went out at 
ten o'clock in the morning and returned at five in 
the afternoon, with an exceedingly dirty face, and 
smelling mouldy. Nobody knew what he was or 
where he went, but Mrs. Tibbs used to say, with an 
air of great importance, that he was engaged in the 
city." 

Nadgett, in Martin Chuzzlewit, " was always 
keeping appointments in the city, and the other man 
never seemed to come." 

On the right is the Mansion House, where, to quote 
from A Christmas Carol, " the Lord Mayor, in the 
stronghold of the mighty Mansion House, gave orders 
to his fifty cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as 



54 THEfLONDON OF DICKENS 

a Lord Mayor's household should." In Gone Astray 
we read, " There was dinner preparing at the Man- 
sion House, and when I peeped in at the grated 
kitchen window . . my heart began to beat 
with hope that the Lord Mayor . . . would look 
out of an upper apartment and direct me to be taken 
in." 

The Bank of England recalls the visit of the elder 
Weller with Sam to cash the money the former 
received under Mrs. Weller's will, when some 
amusing references were made to " reduced coun- 
sels." 

That Dickens was familiar with this portion of 
the city, the following from The Uncommercial 
Traveller will show : 

To walk on to the Bank, lamenting the good 

old times and bemoaning the present evil period, 

would be an easy next step, so I would take it, 

and would make my houseless circuit of the Bank, 

and give a thought to the treasure within ; 

likewise to the guard of soldiers passing the night 

there, and nodding over the fire. 

Bella Wilf er, too, we read, ' ' thought, as she glanced 

at the mighty Bank, how agreeable it would be to 

have an hour's gardening there, with a bright copper 

shovel." 

The Royal Exchange finds frequent reference in 
Dickens. In Sketches by Boz we read, " We never 
went on 'Change, by any chance, without seeing 
some shabby genteel men, and we have wondered 
what earthly business they can have there." A 
similar experience was that of Pip, who said : " I 
went on 'Change and I saw fluey men sitting there 
. . . whom I took to be great merchants, though 
I couldn't understand why they should all be out 
of spirits." Herbert, too, in the same book, Great 
Expectations, " when he felt his case unusually 
serious . . . would go on 'ChangS at a busy time 



BLOOMSBURY TO THE BANK 55 

and walk in and out, in a kind of gloomy country 
dance figure, among the assembled magnates." 

Quilp " made appointments on 'Change with men 
in glazed hats and round jackets pretty well every 
day " and Scrooge, Flintwinch and Mr. Dombey 
were regular frequenters there. 

In Gone Astray Dickens as a child describes find- 
ing himself on 'Change and seeing " the shabby 
people sitting under the placards about ships " 
and coming to the conclusion that " they were 
misers, who had embarked all their wealth to go and 
buy gold dust or something of that sort and were 
waiting for their respective captains to come and 
tell them that they were ready to set sail/' 

Mr. Toots, we are told, not bearing to contemplate 
the bliss of Walter Gay and Florence Dombey, 
explained to Captain Cuttle that he might possibly 
be under the necessity of leaving the company 
assembled at The Little Wooden Midshipman, 
" to see what o'clock it is by the Royal Exchange." 



ITINERARY AND REFERENCES 
ROUTE TWO 



BLOOMSBURY TO THE BANK 



Southampton Street 

Drood, 22 

Red Lion Square 

Gone Astray 

Kingsgate Street (site) 
Chuzzlewit, 19, 38 

Turnstile 

Bleak House, 10 

Chancery Lane 
See Route i 

Holborn 

Bleak House, 4, 10 
Dorrit, I, 14, 13 
Chuzzlewit, 13, 19. 
Barnaby, 66, 67 
Drood, ii 
Twist, 21 
Sketches, Scenes, 7 

Furnival Street (late Castle Street) 

Copperfield, 36 

Furnival's Inn (site) 
Life 

Pickwick Preface 
Chuzzlewit, 36, 37, 45, 53 
Drood, n, 20 
Sketches, Christening 

Barnard's Inn 

Expectations, 20 
Uncommercial, 14 

Langdale's Distillery (site) 
Barnaby, 61, 66-8 

Fetter Lane 

Barnaby, 66 



Sketches, Characters, 9 
Twist, 26 

Bull Inn (site) 
Chuzzlewit, 25 

Holborn Viaduct (crossing Hol- 
born Hill) 

Pickwick, 47 
Expectations, 21 
Chuzzlewit, 26 
Sketches, Dancing 
Barnaby, 67, 61, 66 
Bleak House, i 

St. Andrew's Church 

Twist, 21 
Copperfield, 25 
Bleak House, 10 
Reprinted, Bill-sticking 

Ely Place 

Copperfield, 25 

Thavies' Inn 

Bleak House, 4, 5, 9 

Bleeding Heart Yard 
Dorrit, I., 9, 10, 12 

Saffron Hill 

Twist, 8, 15, 26 
Bleak House, 26 

Field Lane (site) 
Twist, 8, 26 

Smithfleld 

Barnaby, 37, 68 
Uncommercial, 34 
Expectations, 20, 51 



BLOOMSBURY TO THE BANK 



57 



Nickleby, 5, 4 
Twist, 16, 21, 42 
Dorrit, I, 13 

Snow Hill 

Barnaby, 67 
Nickleby, 3, 4, 42 
Domt, I, 13 
Twist, 26 

Saracen's Head (rebuilt) 

Nickleby, 3, 4, 39, 42 

Cock Lane 

Nickleby, 49 
Two Cities, I, i 

Hosier Lane 

Twist, 21 

St. Sepulchre's Church 

Twist, 15, 52 
Nickleby, 4 
Uncommercial, 13 
Barnaby, 64 

Giltspur Street 

Expectations, 51 

The Compter (site) 
Nickleby, 4 

Newgate (site) 

Twist, 52, ii 

Barnaby, 61, 63, 64, 66, 67, 58 

Curiosity, 63 

Nickleby, 4, 38 

Expectations, 20, 32, 33 

Two Cities, II, 2 

Sketches, Newgate 

,, Criminal Courts 
Bleak House, 26 
Ur commercial, 34, 13 

Old Bailey 

Pickwick, 33 
Twist, 52 
Barnaby, 39 
Chuzzlewit, 9 
Curiosity, 63 
Uncommercial, 34 



Two Cities, II, 2 
Nickleby, 26 
Expectations, 56 

Newgate Market (site) 
Bleak House, 5 

Newgate Street 

Pickwick, 31 
Barnaby, 64, 67 
Nickleby, 26 
Expectations, 33 

St. Bartholomew's Hospital 

Pickwick, 32 
Chuzzlewit, 49, 25 
Dorrit, I, 13 
Reprinted, Detective 

Little Britain 

Expectations, 20 

Bartholomew Close 

Expectations, 20 

Albion, Aldersgate Street (site) 
Life 

Aldersgate Street 

Miscel. : Lively Turtle 
Dorrit, I, 13 
Drood, 23 
Chuzzlewit, n 

St. Martin's-le-Grand 

Pickwick, 2 

General Post Office 

Nickleby, 39 
Drood, 23 
Chuzzlewit, n 
Twist, 26 
Dorrit II, 8 

Bull and Mouth (site) 
Pickwick, 10 
Nickleby, 39 

St. Paul's Cathedral 

See Route 13 

Cheapslde 

Pickwick, 20, 31 



THE LONDON OF DICKENS 



Nickleby, 26, 37 
Mutual, I, 4, III. i 
Barnaby, 37, 67 
Expectations, 48, 20 
Chuzzlewit, 25 
Dombey, 13, 22 
Sketches : Christening 
Dorrit, I, 3 
Uncommercial, 12 

Wood Street. Site of The Cross 
Keys Inn 

Expectations, 20, 2?, 33 
Sketches, Scenes, 16 
Uncommercial, 12 
Dorrit, I, 13 
Life 

Huggin Lane 

Pickwick Advt. 

Lad Lane 
Dorrit, I, 13 

Bow Church 
Dombey, 4 

Bueklersbury 

Sketches, Thoughts 

Poultry 

Barnaby. 67 

Grocers' Hall Court 
Pickwick, 20 



Mansion House 
Pickwick, 20, 33 
Carol 

Barnaby, 61 
Gone Astray 
Clock 
Sketches: Scenes, 17 

Bank of England 

Pickwick, 55 
Nickleby, 35 
Uncommercial, 13, 9 
Sketches, Bloomsbury 
Barnaby, 67 
Chuzzlewit, 37 
Mutual, III, i 
Dombey, 4, 13 
Dorrit, I, 26 
Dr. Marigold 

Royal Exchange 

Sketches, Shabby Genteel 

,, Sparkins 
Carol 

Nickleby, 41 
Dombey, 5, 56 
Expectations, 22 
Chuzzlewit, 36, 27, 8 
Dorrit, I, 29 
Gone Astray 
Barnaby, 67 
Golden Mary 



ROUTE THREE 

UP AND DOWN THE CITY ROAD. 
(THE BANK TO ISLINGTON) 

TRUE to the popular song of his time, Dickens in 
his books takes us "up and down the City Road " 
in company with Mr. Micawber and young David 
Copperfield, with Polly Toodles, the Charitable 
Grinder and little Florence Dombey ; also " in and 
out the Eagle " with Miss Jemima Evans and her 
friends. We will go in company with this glorious 
assemblage. 

The road from the Bank to Islington is a straight 
one ; or as straight a one as can be expected to be 
met with in London, and, although we shall make an 
occasional diversion off the main road, we shall not 
complete the journey by such a roundabout route 
as that made by Tom Pinch when he first came to 
London and was living in Islington : 

Now Tom, in his guileless distrust of London, 
thought himself very knowing in coming to the 
determination that he would not ask to be directed* 
to FurnivaTs Inn if he could help it ; unless, 
indeed, he should happen to find himself near the 
Mint, or the Bank of England ; in which case 
he would step in, and ask a civil question or two, 
confiding in the perfect respectability of the 
concern. So on he went, looking up all the 
streets he came near, and going up half of them ; 
and thus, by dint of not being true to Goswell 
Street, and filing off into Aldermanbury, and 
59 



60 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

bewildering himself in Barbican, and being con- 
stant to the wrong point of the compass in London 
Wall, and then getting himself crosswise into 
Thames Street, by an instinct that would have 
been marvellous if he had had the least desire 
or reason to go there, he found himself at last 
hard by the Monument. 

From the Bank we proceed northward along 
Princes Street, with the Bank of England on the 
right. Lothbury mentioned below is on the right ; 
on the left is that end of Gresham Street, formerly 
known as Cateaton Street, and is thus referred 
to in the original advertisement of Pickwick, un- 
doubtedly drawn up by Dickens himself : 

The Pickwick Club, so renowned in the annals 
of Huggin Lane, so closely entwined with a 
thousand interesting associations connected with 
Lothbury and Cateaton Street, was founded in 
the year one thousand eight hundred and twenty- 
two by Mr. Samuel Pickwick. 
The third turning on the right of Gresham Street 
leads to the Guildhall, whither the four Pickwickians 
drove for the famous trial of Bardell v. Pickwick, 
The Guildhall Court has been rebuilt since those 
days. 

Of the Guildhall itself we read in Gone Astray : 

I made up my little mind to seek my fortune. 
. . . My plans . . . were first to go and see 
the Giants in Guildhall. ... I found it a long 
journey to the giants and a slow one. . . . 
Being very tired I got into the corner under 
Magog, to be out of the way of his eye, and fell 
asleep. 

The following description of the City Giants, as 
seen by John Toddyhigh, is taken from Master 
Humphrey's Clock : 

The statues of the two giants, Gog and Magog, 
each above fourteen feet in height, those which 



UP AND DOWN THE CITY ROAD 61 

succeeded to still older and more barbarous 
figures after the Great Fire of London, and which 
stand in the Guildhall to this day, were endowed 
with life and motion. These guardian genii of 
the City had quitted their pedestals, and re- 
clined in easy attitudes, in the great stained glass 
window. Between them was an ancient cask, 
which seemed to be full of wine ; for the younger 
Giant, clapping his huge hand upon it, and throw- 
ing up his mighty leg, burst into an exulting 
laugh, which reverberated through the hall like 
thunder. 
Lothbury leads into Throgmorton Street, on the 

left of which is Austin Friars, which Tom Pinch 

said sounded ghostly. Here was the office of Mr. 

Fips. 

They got to Austin Friars, where, in a very 
dark passage on the first floor, oddly situated 
at the back of a house, across some leads, they 
found a little blear-eyed glass door up in one 
corner, with Mr. Fips painted on it in characters 
which were meant to be transparent. 
On the opposite side of Throgmorton Street is 

the Stock Exchange, where, according to Dombey 

and Son " a sporting taste (originating generally in 

bets of new hats) is much in vogue." 
In Pickwick we read : 

They proceeded from the Bank to the gate 
of the Stock Exchange, to which Wilkins Flasher, 
Esquire, after a short absence, returned with a 
cheque on Smith, Payne & Smith, for five 
hundred and thirty pounds ; that being the sum 
of money to which Mr. Weller, at the market 
price of the day, was entitled, in consideration 
of the balance of the second Mrs. Weller's 
funded savings. 
Returning to Lothbury, we turn to the right into 

Moorgate Street. The second court on the left is 



62 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

Great Bell Alley, formerly Bell Alley, which leads 
into Coleman Street. 

It is entirely rebuilt, but, in its continuation the 
other side of Coleman Street, one can get a fair 
idea of what the Alley was some eighty years ago. 
" Namby, Bell Alley, Coleman Street/' was the 
Sheriff's Officer, and to his house Mr. Pickwick was 
taken prior to being put into the Fleet Prison. 

Continuing along Moorgate Street we pass on the 
left the street called London Wall marking the 
course of the old wall of the city and enter into the 
district of Finsbury. Arthur Clennam and Daniel 
Doyce " shared a portion of a roomy house in one 
of the grave old-fashioned city streets, lying not 
far from the Bank of England, by London Wall." 

To the right, between London Wall and as far 
to the north as Old Street, were once Moorfields, 
which was the scene of one of the exploits of the 
rioters in Barnaby Rudge. 

From about this point we can take a motor-bus 
or tram-car to the Angel at Islington, and so save 
what would be a rather tiring walk of nearly two 
miles. Finsbury Square is passed on the right. 
This square was built on part of Moorfields. 

In the expedition of Oliver Twist and Bill Sikes 
to Chertsey we read that, from the Bethnal Green 
Road," turning down Sun Street and Crown Street 
and crossing Finsbury Square, Mr. Sikes struck, 
by the way of Chiswell Street, into Barbican, thence 
into Long Lane and so into Smithfield." 

Sun Street is a continuation of the south side of 
Finsbury Square. Chiswell Street is directly on the 
left and leads into Barbican, in which neighbourhood 
was the meeting place of the Prentice Knights of 
Barnaby Rudge, in an " ill-favoured pit . . . pro- 
foundly dark and reeking with stagnant odours." 

Long Lane is a continuation of Barbican, the fur- 
ther side of Aldersgate Street. 



UP AND DOWN THE CITY ROAD 63 

For Smithfield, see Route Two. 
Continuing past Finsbury Square, we arrive in 
City Road. When writing The Old Curiosity Shop, 
Dickens apparently got lost in this district, for he 
wrote to Forster : 

I intended calling on you this morning on my 

way back from Bevis Marks, whither I went to 

look at a house for Sampson Brass. But I got 

mingled up in a kind of social paste with the Jews 

of Houndsditch and roamed about among them 

till I came out in Moorfields, quite unexpectedly. 

So I got into a cab, and came home again, very 

tired, by way of the City Road. 

Little Paul Dombey, in charge of Polly Toodles 

and Susan Nipper, wandered here from Camden 

Town to meet the newly made " Charitable Grinder " 

little Biler in his full charity dress ; and about 

here Florence was stolen by " good Mrs. Brown." 

The portion of Old Street on the right running 
eastward was formerly known as Old Street Road. 
Here Mrs. Guppy lived at No. 302. Said Mr. 
Guppy to Esther in " Bleak House : 

My mother has a little property, which takes 
the form of a small life annuity ; upon which she 
lives in an independent though unassuming 
manner in the Old Street Road. She is emin- 
ently calculated for a mother-in-law. 
Further along City Road on the right, after passing 
No. 221, is Shepherdess Walk, on the right of which, 
almost at the corner stands a modern public-house, 
the Eagle, on the site of the famous gardens of that 
name. In Sketches by Boz is a story dealing with 
the Eagle, entitled " Miss Evans and the Eagle." 

On the opposite side formerly stood St. Luke's 
Workhouse. 

When David came to live with the Micawbers in 
Windsor Terrace, he tells us that the servant there 
was " a dark-complexioned young woman, with a 



64 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

habit of snorting ; and informed me, before half an 
hour had expired, that she was ' a Orfling/ and 
came from St. Luke's Workhouse, in the neigh- 
bourhood." 

The next street but one on the right is Windsor 
Terrace. 

" My address/ 1 said Mr. Micawber, " is Windsor 
Terrace, City Road. I in short/' said Mr. 
Micawber, with the same genteel air, and in 
another burst of confidence " I live there/' 
And sure enough here are houses, any one of which 
might have been the house of Mr. Micawber, that 
was " shabby like himself, but also, like himself, 
making all the show it could." 

" Under the impression," said Mr. Micawber, 
" that your peregrinations in this metropolis 
have not as yet been extensive, and that you 
might have some difficulty in penetrating the 
arcana of the Modern Babylon in the direction 
of the City Road in short," said Mr. Micawber, 
in another burst of confidence, " that you 
might lose yourself I shall be happy to call 
this evening, and instal you in the knowledge 
of the nearest way." 

Here David had a room " at the top of the house, 
at the back . . . and very scantily furnished." 
Here poor Mrs. Micawber, like the Mrs. Dickens in 
real life, had tried to exert herself, and had covered 
the centre of the street door with " a great brass- 
plate, on which was engraved, ' Mrs. Micawber's 
Boarding Establishment for Young Ladies': but," 
as David Copperfield continues to inform us, "I 
never found that any young lady had ever been 
to school there ; or that any young lady ever came, 
or proposed to come ; or that the least preparation 
was ever made to receive any young lady. The only 
visitors I ever saw or heard of were creditors." 
This was a sad household for the young boy of fiction, 



UP AND DOWN THE CITY ROAD 65 

a replica of the household Dickens had known at 
Camden Town when a boy himself. 

Mr. Micawber had a few books on a little 
chiffonier, which he called the library ; and those 
went first. I carried them, one after another, 
to a bookstall in the City Road one part of 
which, near our house, was almost all book- 
stalls and bird-shops then and sold them for 
whatever they would bring. 
A row of shops similar to Dickens's description 
stood in the City Road, opposite Windsor Terrace, 
until a few years ago, when the present warehouses 
were erected. 

City Road now leads us straight to the Angel at 
Islington. Those who are walking can turn to the 
left at Sidney Street and then to the right along 
Mr. Pickwick's portion of Goswell Road (Goswell 
Street it was then called), and so up to the Angel, 
where it joins City Road. 

Mr. Samuel Pickwick . . . threw open his 
chamber window, and looked out upon the world 
beneath. Goswell Street was at his feet, Goswell 
Street was on his right hand as far as the eye 
could reach, Goswell Street extended on his 
left ; and the opposite side of Goswell Street 
was over the way. " Such/' thought Mr. 
Pickwick, " are the narrow views of those philo- 
sophers who, content with examining the things 
that lie before them, look not to the truths 
which are hidden beyond. As well might I 
be content to gaze on Goswell Street for ever, 
without one effort to penetrate to the hidden 
countries which on every side surround it." 
At the end of Goswell Road, just after its junction 
with City Road, we arrive in Islington. The High 
Street runs to the right, and St. John's Street to 
the left. Straight ahead is Pentonville Road, 
leading to King's Cross (Routes Four and Six). 

E 



66 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

Islington was a pleasant suburb in Dickens's 
day, for we read in Sketches by Boz that " the early 
clerk population of ... Islington and Pentonville 
are fast directing their steps towards Chancery 
Lane and the Inns of Court." It was the gate of 
London for all the coaches coming from the north. 
The coach conveying John Browdie and his bride in 
their honeymoon trip to London is described as 
traversing " with cheerful noise the yet silent streets 
of Islington." And in Bleak House we read of 
Inspector Bucket and Esther on their return from 
their search for Lady Dedlock coming " at between 
three and four o'clock in the morning into Islington. 
. . . We stopped in a High Street where there was 
a coach-stand." 

When Joe Willet left London, " he went out by 
Islington," and, in the same book, Barnaby and his 
father, after escaping from Newgate, " made towards 
Clerkenwell, and, passing thence to Islington as 
the nearest point of egress, were quickly in the 
fields." Bill Sikes, in his flight to Hatfield, also 
" went through Islington." 

Mr. Morfin, " a great musical amateur in his way 
after business lived in Islington, and the first 
lodgings let by Mrs. Lirriper were also in this 
district ; which brings us to that delightful couple, 
Tom Pinch and his sister Ruth, who were on the look- 
out for lodgings. 

" It ought to be a cheap neighbourhood," 
said Tom, " and not too far from London. 
Let me see. Should you think Islington a good 
place ? " "I should think it was an excellent 
place, Tom." " It used to be called Merry 
Islington once upon a time," said Tom. " Per- 
haps it's merry now ; if so, it's all the better." . . . 
After roaming up and down for hours, looking 
at some scores of lodgings, they began to find it 
rather fatiguing, especially as they saw none 



UP AND DOWN THE CITY ROAD 67 

which were at all adapted to their purpose. 
At length, however, in a singular little old- 
fashioned house, up a blind street, they dis- 
covered two small bedrooms and a triangular 
parlour, which promised to suit them well 
enough. 

What a regret it is that we have not yet been able 
to discover that house with the triangular parlour 
the hallowed spot where the famous pudding was 
made ! 

The Peacock at Islington (a modern public-house 
of that name is to be seen a few doors past the 
Angel) was the first stopping place of the coach 
that bore Nicholas away to the Yorkshire school, 
and again we find it mentioned in The Holly Tree 
as the inn from which the teller of the story started 
off on his Christmas coach ride to the North. It 
was a bitterly cold night, and, when he got to the 
Peacock, he tells us, "I found everybody drinking 
hot purl in self-preservation." 

The modern building at the corner of Pentonville 
Road and High Street replaces the older Angel 
Tavern ; but the entrance of Oliver Twist into 
London at this point loses nothing of its interest. 

As Jack Dawkins objected to their entering 
London before nightfall, it was nearly eleven 
o'clock when they reached the turnpike at 
Islington. They crossed from the Angel into 
St. John's Road. 

Mr. Brownlow lived in Pentonville, close by, and 
when he rescued Oliver from the clutches of Fagin, 
and likewise of Mr. Fang, the Hatton Garden 
Magistrate, we read : 

The coach rattled away . . . over nearly 
the same ground as that which Oliver had 
traversed when he first entered London . . . 
turning a different way when it reached the 
Angel at Islington, 



68 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

Another set of Oliver Twist characters arrived at 
the Angel at a still later date, Noah Claypole and 
Charlotte, and their advent is described as follows : 

Mr. Claypole went on, without halting, until 
he arrived at the Angel, Islington, where he wisely 
judged, from the crowd of passengers and num- 
bers of vehicles, that London began in earnest. 
... He crossed into St. John's Road, and was 
soon deep in the obscurity of the intricate and 
dirty ways which, lying between Gray's Inn 
Lane and Smithfield, render that part of the town 
one of the lowest and worst that improvement 
has left in the midst of London. 
The arrival of Oliver Twist in London, referred 
to above, presents an interesting itinerary. He met 
the Artful Dodger at Barnet, and the next we hear 
of the pair is in Islington. 

They crossed from the Angel into St. John's 
Road, struck down the small street which 
terminates at Sadler's Wells Theatre ; through 
Exmouth Street and Coppice Row ; down the 
little court by the side of the workhouse ; 
across the classic ground which once bore the 
name of Hockley-in-the-Hole ; thence into Little 
Saffron Hill, and so into Saffron Hill the great. 
As this is a link with the Saffron Hill district 
referred to in Route One, it is interesting to trace 
out here the above route, which, with the construc- 
tion of Rosebery Avenue (running from St. John's 
Street to the corner of Gray's Inn Road and Clerken- 
well Road see Route One), has been greatly altered. 
St. John's Street was formerly St. John's Street Road. 
The first turning on the right is Arlington Street, 
" the small street which terminates at Sadler's 
Wells Theatre." This leads us to the back of 
Sadler's Wells Theatre, an ancient building shorn 
of all its former glory, and by turning round to the 
left we get into Rosebery Avenue, by the side of the 



UP AND DOWN THE CITY ROAD 69 

reservoirs known as the New River Head, which has 
an association with Uriah Keep. 

" The 'ouse that I am stopping at a sort of 
a private hotel and boarding-house, Master Cop- 
perfield, near the New River 'Ed will have gone 
to bed these two hours/' 

From Sadler's Wells, the Artful Dodger's route 
would lie across the road, down Garnault Place by 
the side of the Town Hall, and then to the right 
along Exmouth Street to Farringdon Road, formerly 
Coppice Row. When Oliver was taken home to Mr. 
Brownlow's at Pentonville, " the coach rattled away, 
down Mount Pleasant and up Exmouth Street." 

On the left of Exmouth Street is Spa Fields, of 
which we read in The Old Curiosity Shop : "I 
remember the time when old Maunders had in his 
cottage in Spa Fields . . . eight male and female 
dwarfs setting down to dinner every day, who was 
waited on by eight old giants in green coats, red 
smalls, blue cotton stockings and high-lows." 

Reaching Farringdon Road, the Parcels Post 
Office, on the right, at the corner of King's Cross 
Road, is on the site of the old Clerkenwell Gaol. 
Here runs off to the left Mount Pleasant, mentioned 
above, and also in Bleak House, as the district in 
which the Smallweed family resided. 

In a rather ill-favoured and ill-savoured 
neighbourhood, though one of its rising grounds 
bears the name of Mount Pleasant, the elfin 
Smallweed, christened Bartholomew, and known 
on the domestic hearth as Bart, passes that 
limited portion of his time on which the office 
and its contingencies have no claim. He dwells 
in a little narrow street, always solitary, shady, 
and sad, closely bricked in on all sides like a 
tomb, but where there yet lingers the stump of 
an old forest tree, whose flavour is about as 
fresh and natural as the Smallweed smack of 
youth. 



70 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

Coppice Row was cleared away in 1860 by the 
making of Farringdon Road. " The little court by 
the side of the workhouse " is Crawford Passage in 
Farringdon Road on the right, opposite Bowling 
Green Lane. Hockley-in-the-Hole has disappeared, 
but Back Hill and Ray Street mark the site of this 
once muddy bull-baiting ground. 

Thence we could get straight into Little Saffron 
Hill (Route One), but there is little of the Dickens 
period left in these streets to-day. 

Returning along Rosebery Avenue, and passing 
the New River Head, and the front of Sadler's Wells 
Theatre, we bear to the left and again reach the 
Angel at Islington. 

To the left is Pentonville Road, leading to King's 
Cross (see Routes Four and Six). 



ITINERARY AND REFERENCES 
ROUTE THREE 



THE BANK TO ISLINGTON 



Lothbury 

Advt. to Pickwick 

Gresham Street (formerly 
Cateaton Street) 

Ditto 

Alder manbury 

Chuzzlewit, 37 

Guildhall 

Pickwick, 34 
Gone Astray 
Clock 

King Street 

Pickwick, 34 

Austin Friars 

Chuzzlewit, 39 
Gone Astray 

Broad Street 

Curiosity, 58 
Nickleby, 3 1 

Stock Exchange 

Pickwick, 55 
Dpmbey, 13 
Nickleby, 41 

Bell Alley, Coleman Street 
Pickwick, 40 

London Wall 

Chuzzlewit, 37 
Dorrit, I, 26 

Moorflelds 

Barnaby, 52, 66 
Dorrit, I, 7 



Flnsbury 

Nickleby, 16 

Flnsbury Square 

Twist, 21 

Sun Street 

Twist, 21 

Chiswell Street 

Twist, 21 

Barbican 

Twist, 21 
Dorrit, 13 
Chuzzlewit, 37 
Barnaby, 8 

Long Lane 

Twist, 21 

Whltecross Street 

Pickwick, 40 

City Road 

Life 

Copperfield, u 
Dombey, 6 
Sketches, Orator 

Old Street (Road) 
Bleak House, 9 
Uncommercial, 4 

The Eagle, City Road 
Sketches, Miss Evans 

St. Luke's Workhouse 
Copperfield, n 



THE LONDON OF DICKENS 



Windsor Terrace 

Copperfield, u 

Goswell Road (Street) 
Pickwick, 2, 12, 34 
Chuzzlewit, 37 

Islington 

Sketches, Bloomsbury, Streets 

Chuzzlewit, 36, 37 

Bleak House, 54 

Nickleby, 39 

Lirriper 

Barnaby, 68, 31 

Dombey, 13 

Twist, 8, 12, 42, 48 

The Angel 

Twist, 8, 12, 42 
Clock 

The Peacock 

Nickleby, 5 
Holly Tree 

St. John's Street (Road) 

Twist, 8 

Arlington Street 

Twist, 8 



Sadler's Wells Theatre 

Twist, 8 
Sketches, Theatres 

New River Head 

Copperfield, 25 
Barnaby, 67 

Ex mouth Street 

Twist, 12 

Spa Fields 

Curiosity, 19 

Clerkenwell Gaol 

Twist, 13 

Mount Pleasant 
Bleak House, 21 
Twist, 12 

Coppice Row 
Crawford Passage 
Hockley-in-the-Hole 
Saffron Hill 

Twist, 8 



ROUTE FOUR 
THE NORTHERN HEIGHTS 
(ISLINGTON TO HIGHGATE AND HAMPSTEAD) 

THE Angel at Islington, no longer a tavern of the 
old style, but an up-to-date tea shop, is one of the 
best-known landmarks in London. We have already 
described its Dickens associations in the last ramble. 

To the north of the Angel runs Pentonville Road, 
leading to King's Cross. Pentonville was quite a 
fashionable suburb when Dickens wrote of it. Mr. 
Brownlow lived in " a neat house in a quiet shady 
street near Pentonville," and so did Mr. Panks, 
" the fairy " of Little Dorrit. Mr. Micawber indited 
at least two of his epistles from his " residence, 
Pentonville, London/' and Mr. Nicodemus Dumps, 
in The Bloomsbury Christening, " rented a first- 
floor furnished at Pentonville," which " commanded 
a dismal prospect of an adjacent churchyard/ 
Perhaps this was the churchyard on the right in 
which Grimaldi the clown (whose memoirs Dickens 
edited) lies buried. He lived at No. 37 Penton 
Street, a turning on the right. In Penton Street 
formerly stood White Conduit House, to which 
Dickens makes one or two references. 

In Penton Place, on the left of Pentonville Road, 
at No. 87, lived Mr. Guppy. " It is lowly," he ex- 
plained, in declaring his love to Esther, in Bleak 
House, " but airy ; open at the back, and considered 
one of the 'ealthiest outlets/' 

73 



74 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

In Amwell Street George Cruikshank lived at the 
time he illustrated Sketches by Boz and Oliver Twist. 

Returning to the Angel, a tram or bus should be 
taken to Highgate. To the east of our road lies 
Ball's Pond, the home of Mr. Perch in Dombey and Son. 
In his youth, Dickens had some friends who lived 
in this direction, which probably accounts for Ball's 
Pond being mentioned also in the Sketches, whilst 
Poplar Walk at Stamford Hill was the very first bit 
of Dickensian topography. 

In Holloway the Wilfers lived ; it must have been 
to the left between the Holloway Road and the dust 
mounds at Battle Bridge (King's Cross), referred to 
in Route Six. 

At the Archway Tavern, Highgate, we alight. 
To the right Archway Road leads to Barnet. This 
was the road by which Oliver Twist, accompanied 
by the Dodger, arrived in London ; this was the road 
Mr. Jarndyce used to and from Bleak House, which 
was near St. Albans. Through Highgate Archway, 
the one that was replaced by the present bridge, 
Noah Claypole and Charlotte came, and in the 
Holly Tree Inn we are told of the coach " rattling 
for Highgate Archway over the hardest ground I 
have ever heard the ring of iron shoes on." And 
it was " at the Archway toll over at Highgate " 
Bucket first picked up the trail of Lady Dedlock. 

The road to Highgate runs to the left of the Arch- 
way Tavern, and leads up Highgate Hill ; Bill 
Sikes " went through Islington " when endeavouring 
to escape after the murder of Nancy, and " strode 
up the hill at Highgate, on which stands the stone 
in honour of Whittington." The stone referred to 
is to be seen on the left, incorporated in a lamp-post. 
When Swiveller was taunted by Quilp, he threatened 
to run away " towards Highgate, I suppose." 
He said to himself, " Perhaps the bells might strike 
up ' Turn again, Swiveller.' " Joe Willet came this 



THE NORTHERN HEIGHTS 75 

way when he ran away from home and Dolly : 
" He went out by Islington and so on to Highgate, 
and sat on many stones, and gates, but there were 
no voices in the bells to bid him turn," says Dickens. 
Highgate is mentioned in Pickwick as the scene 
of some of " the unwearied researches " of that 
worthy. 

Dickens knew Highgate fairly well, as in 1832 he 
was lodging there at " Mrs. Goodman's, next door 
to the Red Lion." The Red Lion was in North 
Road, and was demolished in 1900, but the post on 
which the sign used to swing is still to be seen in 
the roadway opposite the modern house on its site. 

In South' Grove, Highgate, is Church House, said 
to be the house of Mrs. Steerforth ; "an old brick 
house ... on the summit of the hill. ... A 
genteel, old-fashioned house, very quiet and orderly. 
From the windows of my room I saw all London 
lying in the distance like a great vapour, with here 
and there some lights twinkling through it." 

The Steerforths were not alone of the David 
Copperfield party at Highgate. Doctor Strong, 
after leaving Canterbury, took a cottage here, and 
David, on his way to visit his old schoolmaster, 
went into a cottage that he saw was to let, and ex- 
amined it narrowly : 

It would do for me and Dora admirably ; with 
a little front garden for Jip to run about in, and 
bark at the tradespeople through the railings, 
and a capital room upstairs for my aunt. I came 
out again, hotter and faster than ever, and dashed 
up to Highgate, at such a rate that I was there 
an hour too early ; and, though I had not been, 
should have been obliged to stroll about to cool 
myself, before I was at all presentable. My 
first care was to find the Doctor's house. It 
was not in that part of Highgate where Mrs. 
Steerforth lived, but quite on the opposite side 
of the little town. 



76 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

Of St. Nicholas' Church, in South Grove, Dickens 
writes in the same book : 

The church with the slender spire, that stands 
on the top of the hill now, was not there then to 
tell me the time. An old red-brick mansion, 
used as a school, was in its place ; and a fine old 
house it must, have been to go to school at, as 
I recollect it. 

Dickens's father and mother are both buried in 
Highgate Cemetery, where also lies his little daughter, 
Dora Annie ; two names very reminiscent of two 
characters in David Copperfald. 

Hampstead Lane leads past Caen Wood into 
Spaniards Lane and Hampstead. Caen Wood or 
Ken Wood now preserved as an open space was 
Lord Mansfield's country house, which the Gordon 
Rioters endeavoured to destroy. 

They . . . marched away to Lord Mans- 
field's country seat at Caen Wood, between 
Hampstead and Highgate, bent upon destroying 
that house likewise, and lighting up a great 
fire there, which from that height should be seen 
all over London. But in this they were dis- 
appointed, for, a party of horse having arrived 
before them, they retreated faster than they 
went, and came straight back to town. 
The Spaniards Inn, which we pass on the right, 
is introduced into Pickwick, when Mrs. Bardell, 
Mrs. Raddle and other friends spent an afternoon 
here. 

They all arrived safely in the Spaniards 
tea gardens, where the luckless Mr. Raddle's 
very first act nearly occasioned his good lady a 
relapse ; it being neither more nor less than to 
order tea for seven, whereas (as the ladies one 
and all remarked) what could have been easier 
than for Tommy to have drunk out of anybody's 
cup or everybody's, if that was all when the 



THE NORTHERN HEIGHTS 77 

waiter wasn't looking ; which would have saved 
one head of tea, and the tea just as good ! 
To the Spaniards she was traced by Mr. Jackson, 
clerk to Dodson & Fogg, and conveyed to the Fleet 
Prison for the costs in the action which Mr. Pickwick 
had so steadfastly refused to pay. 

Hampstead Heath opens out just beyond the 
Spaniards. Walter Gay " knew of no better fields 
than those near Hampstead " for reflecting on the 
unknown life before him when he was ordered by 
the house of Dombey to sail for the Barbadoes. 
Bill Sikes, in his flight from London, 

skirted Caen Wood, and so came out on Hamp- 
stead Heath. Traversing the hollow by the 
Vale of Health, he mounted the opposite bank, 
and, crossing the road which joins the villages of 
Hampstead and Highgate, made along the 
remaining portion of the heath to the fields at 
North End, in one of which he laid himself down 
under a hedge, and slept. 

A walk to Hampstead and Highgate, after a dip 
in the Roman Bath in the Strand, was often indulged 
in by David Copperfield. 

Dick Swiveller, in The Old Curiosity Shop, when he 
married, lived in " a little cottage at Hampstead, 
. . . which had in its garden a smoking-box, the 
envy of the civilised world," and here he was 
visited regularly every Sunday by Mr. Chuckster, 
who became " the great purveyor of general news 
and fashionable intelligence." 

On the left may be seen the Hampstead Ponds 
the speculations on the source of which formed one 
of the papers communicated to the Club by Mr. 
Pickwick, " the man who had traced to their source 
the mighty ponds of Hampstead." Whether or 
not the tittlebats on which Mr. Pickwick had 
agitated the scientific world with his theory were 
found in these selfsame ponds, that history is 
silent. 



78 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

Jack Straw's Castle was a very popular rendezvous 
with Dickens. Forster quotes the following typical 
letter from Dickens suggestive of a walk and dinner 
at this hostelry : " You don't feel disposed, do you, 
to muffle yourself up and start off with me for a good 
brisk walk over Hampstead Heath ? . . . I knows 
a good 'ous there where we can have a red-hot chop 
for dinner, and a glass of good wine." This, Forster 
adds, " led to our first experience of Jack Straw's 
Castle, memorable for many happy meetings in 
coming years." 

During the writing of Pickwick, after the death of 
his sister-in-law Mary, Dickens went for a few months 
to live at Hampstead ; in later years, whilst writing 
Bleak House, he spent a summer at Wylde's Farm, 
near North End. 

At Finchley, Barnaby Rudge and his father, after 
escaping from Newgate, " found in a pasture . . . 
a poor shed with walls of mud, and roof of grass and 
brambles, built for some cowherd, but now deserted. 
Here they lay down for the rest of the night." 

Abel Cottage, the home of Mr. Garland, where 

Kit and Barbara were employed, was at Finchley. 

To be sure, it was a beautiful little cottage 

with a thatched roof, and little spires at the gable 

ends, and pieces of stained glass in some of the 

windows, almost as large as pocket-books. 

In Dombey and Son, Mr. Toots refers to going "as 
far as Finchley to get some uncommonly fine chick- 
weed that grows there," for Miss Dombey: and it 
was no doubt at Finchley that Mr. Carker, the junior, 
lived with his sister, " near to where the busy great 
north road of bygone days is silent and almost 
deserted, except by wayfarers, who toil along on 
foot. ... It is neither of the town nor country." 

At Cobley's Farm, Finchley, Dickens took lodgings 
in 1843, whilst writing a part of Martin Chuzzlewit, 
and to Finchley we owe Mrs. Gamp, as the follow- 



THE NORTHERN HEIGHTS 79 

ing extract from Forster's Life of Dickens will 
show : 

I soon after joined him at a cottage he rented 
in Finchley, and here, walking and talking in 
the green lanes as the midsummer months were 
coming on, his introduction of Mrs. Gamp, and 
the uses to which he should apply that remark- 
able personage, first occurred to him. 
In Hornsey Churchyard, Betsey Trotwood's hus- 
band was laid to rest. 

Hornsey, too, is noted as one of the places in 
which Mr. Samuel Pickwick, G.C.M.P.C., had made 
" unwearied researches." 



ITINERARY AND REFERENCES 
ROUTE FOUR 

ISLINGTON TO HAMPSTEAD 



Pentonvllle 

Twist, 12 

Sketches, Bloomsbury, Miss 

Evans 
Pickwick, 2 
Dorrit, I, 13, 25 
Copperfield, 17 
Uncommercial, 14 

Penton Street 

Gnmaldi 

White Conduit House (site) 
Sketches : Dinners, 1st May 

Penton Place 

Bleak House, 9 

Ball's Pond 

Dombey, 31, 1 8 
Sketches : Sentiment 

Highbury Barn 

Miscel. P. : Extraordinary 
Traveller 

Stoke Newington 

Uncommercial, 12 

Stamford Hill 

Sketches : Mr. Minns 

Holloway 

Mutual, I, 4 
Nickleby, 36 

Highgate Arehway 

Bleak House, 57 
Twist, 42 
Holly Tree 

Highgate Hill 

Twist, 48 r 
Barnaby, 31 
Curiosity, 50 

Highgate 

Pickwick, I 



Copperfield, 20, 35, 36, 51 

Barnaby, 4 

Life 

South Grove 

Copperfield, 20, 35, 51 

Highgate Church 

Copperfield, 36 

Highgate Cemetery 
Life 

Caen Wood 

Barnaby, 66 

Twist, 48 

Spaniards 

Pickwick, 46 

Hampstead 

Sunday 
Dombey, 15 
Copperfield, 35 
Sketches : Tottle 
Pickwick, i 
Curiosity, 73 
Haunted House 
Barnaby, 16, 66 
Twist, 48 

Jack Straw's Castle 

Life 

Finehley 

Barnaby, 68 
Curiosity, 22 
Dombey, 32, 33 
Life 

Hornsey 

Copperfield, 54 
Pickwick, i 



80 



ROUTE FIVE 
COVENT GARDEN TO EUSTON 

" To be taken out for a walk . . . especially 
if it were anywhere about Covent Garden or the 
Strand, perfectly entranced him with pleasure." 

Forster's Life of Dickens. 

COVENT Garden had a great fascination for Dickens. 
Of his earliest researches into its deep mysteries 
Forster tells us that while he lived at Bayham Street 
he had borrowed a copy of George Colman's " Broad 
Grins," which " seized his fancy very much ; and 
he was so impressed by its description of Covent 
Garden in the piece called the " Elder Brother " 
that he stole down to the market by himself to com- 
pare it with the book. He remembered, as he said 
in telling me this, snuffing up the flavour of the faded 
cabbage leaves, as if it were the very breath of 
comic fiction. Nor was he far wrong, as comic 
fiction then and for some time after was. It was 
reserved for himself to give sweeter and fresher 
breath to it." 

As an Uncommercial Traveller in the fancy goods 
line, as he described himself, he always started from 
his rooms in Covent Garden (he actually did have 
furnished rooms in Wellington Street, at the office of 
All the Year Round see Route Thirteen). 

Here is Little Dorrit's view of Covent Garden, 
when she visited Arthur Clennam at his lodgings 
there : 

Little Dorrit looked into a dim room, which 
seemed a spacious one to her, and grandly 
81 F 



82 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

furnished. Courtly ideas of Covent Garden, as 
a place with famous coffee-houses, where gentle- 
men wearing gold-laced coats and swords had 
quarrelled and fought duels ; costly ideas of 
Covent Garden, as a place where there were 
flowers in winter at guineas apiece, pineapples 
at guineas a pound, and peas at guineas a pint ; 
picturesque ideas of Covent Garden, as a place 
where there was a mighty theatre, showing 
wonderful and beautiful sights to richly dressed 
ladies and gentlemen, and which was for ever 
far beyond the reach of poor Fanny or poor 
Uncle ; desolate ideas of Covent Garden, as 
having all those arches in it, where the miserable 
children in rags among whom she had just now 
passed, like young rats, slunk and hid, fed on 
offal, huddled together for warmth, and were 
hunted about ; teeming ideas of Covent Garden, 
as a place of past and present mystery, romance, 
abundance, want, beauty, ugliness, fair country 
gardens, and foul street gutters, all confused 
together, made the room dimmer than it was, 
in Little Dorrit's eyes, as they timidly saw it 
from the door. 
South of St. Paul's Church is Henrietta Street, 

where at No. n are the publishing offices of Chapman 

& Hall, the firm so closely associated with Dickens's 

books. 
Turning out of Southampton Street is Tavistock 

Street : 

Mr. Minns occupied a first floor in Tavistock 
Street, Covent Garden, where he had resided for 
twenty years, having been in the habit of quar- 
relling with his landlord the whole time : regu- 
larly giving notice of his intention to quit on 
the first day of every quarter, and as regularly 
countermanding it on the second. 
The Tavistock Hotel occupies the site of the 



COVENT GARDEN TO EUSTON 83 

Piazza Hotel (formerly known as Cuttris's), where 
Dickens stayed in 1844 on coming to London from 
Italy specially to read The Chimes to a select circle 
of his friends. That he was familiar with the place 
is shown from a letter he wrote to Forster at the 
time saying, " I shall look for you at the further 
table by the fire, where we generally go." In 
David Copperfield, Steerforth announced to David 
that he was " going to breakfast with one of those 
fellows who is at the Piazza Hotel in Covent Garden." 
In an article in Miscellaneous Papers, entitled 
When we stopped Growing, we read : 

There is a fine secrecy and mystery about the 

Piazza how you get up to those rooms above 

it, and what reckless deeds are done theie. 

(We know some of those apartments very well, 

but that does not signify in the least.) 

The other hotel in the Market is the Hummums 

Hotel at the corner of Russell Street. The present 

hotel was built in 1892 on the site of the older hotel 

of that name, at which " the Finches of the Grove " 

used to meet in Great Expectations. When Pip 

received at the Temple Gate Wemmick's warning, 

" Don't go home," he " got a late hackney chariot 

and drove to the Hummums in Covent Garden." 

In those times a bed was always to be got 
there at any hour of the night, and the chamber- 
lain, letting me in at his ready wicket, lighted the 
candle next in order on his shelf, and showed me 
straight into the bedroom next in order on his 
list. It was a sort of vault on the ground floor 
at the back, with a despotic monster of a four- 
post bedstead in it, straddling over the whole 
place, putting one of his arbitrary legs into the 
fire-place, and another into the doorway, and 
squeezing the wretched little washing-stand in 
quite a Divinely Righteous manner. 
Being so much to the fore in his own mind, it is 



84 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

hardly to be wondered at that Covent Garden Market 
should appear, one way or another, in nearly all 
his books. In Sketches by Boz there is an account 
of it at early morning in the article entitled The 
Streets ; in Pickwick we read of Job Trotter sleeping 
here " in a vegetable basket/' In Oliver Twist, 
Sikes refers to it as Common Garden, where fifty 
boys could be found any night to pick from, so 
why " take so much pains about one chalk-faced 
kid I " 

In The Old Curiosity Shop there is a description 
of Covent Garden Market at sunrise " in the spring 
or summer, when the fragrance of sweet flowers 
is in the air." David Copperfield, when he had no 
money, used to stroll as far as Covent Garden Market 
and stare at the pineapples ; and, when he did come 
into some money and gave his party, he bought his 
dessert there ; and when making love, he tells us, 
" at six in the morning I was in Covent Garden 
Market buying a bouquet for Dora." Still later he 
and his aunt " had a temporary lodging in Covent 
Garden " after vacating the two cottages at High- 
gate. Like David, Herbert Pocket, in Great Ex- 
pectations, also went to Covent Garden Market for 
" a little fruit for after dinner, so as to get it good," 
as he thought Pip might thereby be pleased, having 
only just come up from the country. 

In Our Mutual Friend, referring to the drunken 
father of Jenny Wren, we read : 

The degraded creature staggered into Covent 
Garden Market and there bivouacked, to have an 
attack of the trembles, succeeded by an attack 
of the horrors, in a doorway. 

This market of Covent Garden was quite out 
of the creature's line of road, but it had the 
attraction for him which it has for the worst of 
the solitary members of the drunken tribe. 
It may be the companionship of the nightly 



COVENT GARDEN TO EUSTON 85 

stir, or it may be the companionship of the gin 

and beer that slop about among carters and 

hucksters, or it may be the companionship of 

the trodden vegetable refuse, which is so like 

their own dress that perhaps they take the 

Market for a great wardrobe ; but, be. it what it 

may, you shall see no such individual drunkards 

on doorsteps anywhere as there. 

Passing through Russell Street we reach on the 

right Wellington Street, running down to the 

Strand (Route Thirteen) and Bow Street on the left. 

The Police Court of Dickens's day was on the left 

side, between Russell Street and Covent Garden 

Theatre. 

The Artful Dodger was brought up at Bow Street 
Police Station, and hither Noah Claypole was con- 
ducted by Charley Bates, in order to hear the result 
of the court proceedings. 

Opposite the present Police Court is Covent 
Garden Theatre, at which, in the days before 
Pickwick, Dickens aspired for an engagement ; he 
actually had an appointment with the stage manager 
which perhaps fortunately for us was never kept. 
In his own words he has told the story in a letter to 
Forster : 

A letter came, with an appointment to do 
anything of Mathews's I pleased, before him 
and Charles Kemble, on a certain day at the 
theatre. My sister Fanny was in the secret, and 
was to go with me to play the songs. I was laid 
up when the day came with a terrible bad cold 
and an inflammation of the face ; the beginning, 
by the by, of that annoyance in one ear to which 
I am subject to this day. I wrote to say so, 
and added that I would resume my application 
next season. I made a great splash in the Gallery 
soon af terwards ; the Chronicle opened to me ; 
I had a distinction in the little world of the 



86 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

newspaper, which made one like it ; began to 
write ; didn't want money ; had never thought 
of the stage but as a means of getting it ; gradu- 
ally left off turning my thoughts that way, and 
never resumed the idea. I never told you this, 
did I ? See how near I may have been to another 
sort of life! 

On two occasions in David Copperfield did the 
hero go to the theatre ; on the first, it was Co vent 
Garden Theatre that he chose, " and there from the 
back of the centre box " he tells us he " saw Julius 
Caesar and the new pantomime/' The second 
occasion was after his bachelors' party ; he does 
not name the theatre, not being in a condition to 
know, we suppose, but we can give a guess at its 
being Covent Garden : 

We are very high up in a very hot theatre, 
looking down into a large pit, that seemed to me 
to smoke ; the people with whom it was crammed 
were so indistinct. There was a great stage, 
too, looking very clean and smooth after the 
streets ; and there were people upon it, talking 
about something or other, but not at all intelli- 
gibly. There was an abundance of bright lights, 
and there was music, and there were ladies down 
in the boxes, and I don't know what more. 
The whole building looked to me as if it were 
learning to swim, it conducted itself in such 
an unaccountable manner, when I tried to 
steady it. 

The present building dates from 1858, it having 
been destroyed by fire two years previously. 

Opposite the Theatre and by the side of the 
Police Court is Broad Court. Said Mr. Snevellicci, 
in Nicholas Nickleby, " I am not ashamed of myself. 
Snevellicci is my name. I'm to be found in Broad 
Court, Bow Street, when I'm in town. If I'm not 
at home, let any man ask for me at the stage door." 



COVENT GARDEN TO EUSTON 87 

At the end of Bow Street, Long Acre runs right 
and left. Dick Swiveller was accustomed to get 
his meals and articles of attire on credit. " I 
enter in this little book/' he explained, " the names 
of the streets that I can't go down while the shops 
are open/' 

This dinner to-day closes Long Acre. , I bought 
a pair of boots in Great Queen Street last week, 
and made that no thoroughfare too. There's 
only one avenue to the Strand left open now, and 
I shall have to stop up that to-night with a pair 
of gloves. The roads are closing so fast in every 
direction that, in about a month's time, unless 
my aunt sends me a remittance, I shall have to 
go three or four miles out of town to get over 
the way 

On the site now occupied by No. 92 Long Acre 
formerly stood St. Martin's Hall, where Dickens 
gave his first series of paid readings in 1858. It 
was burnt down in 1860, rebuilt, and later recon- 
structed as the Queen's Theatre. It was converted 
into a warehouse in about 1880. 

Returning along Bow Street to Russell Street, 
we turn to the left and find Drury Lane Theatre on 
the right at the corner of Catherine Street and 
Russell Street. 

Miss Petowker, of the Vincent Crummies Com- 
pany, was described as " of the Theatre Royal, 
Drury Lane," and in Pickwick we read Smangle's 
description of Mr. Mivens as a man with " comic 
powers that would do honour to Drury Lane 
Theatre." 

Dickens himself tells us that one of his companions 
at the Blacking Warehouse had a connection with 
the theatre, as follows : 

Poll Green's father had the additional dis- 
tinction of being a fireman, and was employed at 
Drury Lane Theatre, where another relation of 



88 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

Poll's, I think his little sister, did imps in the 
pantomimes. 

To Drury Lane itself there are several references 
in Sketches by Boz, " and in the neighbourhood of 
Drury Lane," we read in the Old Curiosity Shop, 
were the apartments of Dick Swiveller, which, " in 
addition to this conveniency of situation/ had the 
advantage of being over a tobacconist's shop, so 
that he was enabled to procure a refreshing sneeze 
at any time by merely stepping out on the staircase, 
and was saved the trouble and expense of maintain- 
ing a snuff-box." 

Both David Copperfield and the young Dickens 
knew this district intimately. In David Copperfield 
we read : 

Once, I remember, carrying my own bread 
(which I had brought from home in the morning) 
under my arm, wrapped in a piece of paper, 
like a book, and going to a famous alamode 
beef house near Drury Lane, and ordering a 
" small plate " of that delicacy to eat with it. 
What the waiter thought of such a strange little 
apparition coming in all alone, I don't know ; 
but I can see him now, staring at me as I ate 
my dinner, and bringing up the other waiter to 
look. I gave him a halfpenny for himself, and 
I wish he hadn't taken it. 

In the fragment of autobiography published in 
Forster's Life of Dickens, which Dickens used almost 
word for word in the early chapters of David Copper- 
field, the exact site of the " alamode beef house " is 
given as Clare Court. Clare Court was cleared 
away in 1905 for the Aldwych improvement, but 
its site was on the new street, called Kean Street, 
Drury Lane. 

It is thought probable that Dickens had in mind 
the neighbourhood of Drury Lane when he described 
Tom-all-alone in Bleak House, although Field Lane, 



COVENT GARDEN TO EUSTON 89 

off Holborn (Route Two), may have stood for it, as 
Phiz's drawing shows a church like St. Andrew's, 
Holborn, in the background. 

Jo lives that is to say, Jo has not yet died 
in a ruinous place, known to the like of him by 
the name of Tom-all-alone's. It is a black, 
dilapidated street, avoided by all decent people ; 
where the crazy houses were seized upon, when 
their decay was far advanced, by some bold 
vagrants, who, after establishing their own 
possession, took to letting them out in lodgings. 
York Street, behind the Theatre and running 
between Drury Lane and Catherine Street, is approxi- 
mately on the site of Russell Court, in which was the 
burial ground of St. Mary-le-Strand, generally 
accepted as the original of the churchyard where 
Captain Hawdon was buried. It was described 
as 

a hemmed-in churchyard, pestiferous and obscene, 
whence malignant diseases are communicated to 
the bodies of our dear brothers and sisters who 
have not departed ; while our dear brothers and 
sisters who hang about official backstairs 
would to Heaven they had departed ! are very 
complacent and agreeable. 

To the gate with the lamp over it came Lady 
Dedlock to be shown by poor Jo the last resting- 
place of " Nemo," and here, later, Esther found her 
mother dead upon the step. 

At last we stood under a dark and miserable 
covered way, where one lamp was burning over 
an iron gate, and where the morning faintly 
struggled in. The gate was closed. Beyond it 
was a burial-ground a dreadful spot in which 
the night was very slowly stirring ; but where 
I could dimly see heaps of dishonoured graves 
and stones, hemmed in by filthy houses, with a 
few dull lights in their windows, and on whose 



90 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

walls a thick humidity broke out like a disease. 
On the step at the gate, drenched in the fearful 
wet of such a place, which oozed and splashed 
down everywhere, I saw, with a cry of pity and 
horror, a woman lying. ... It was my mother, 
cold and dead. 

The burial-ground was closed in 1853, when 
Bleak House was completed, and thirty years later 
was turned into a recreation ground, and later still 
changed out of all recognition by the alterations 
made in Catherine Street and Drury Lane. 

There was a great outcry at the time the book was 
written concerning the state of these churchyards 
in the heart of the city, and many were then closed. 
Russell Street leads past the theatre into Drury 
Lane, where we turn to the left, passing the end of 
Long Acre, and then reach Great Queen Street on 
the right. On the right of Great Queen Street is 
the Freemasons' Tavern, referred to in Sketches by 
Boz, and later the scene of the farewell dinner given 
to Dickens in 1867, on the eve of his departure to 
America, when Lord Lytton was in the chair. 

A little way further along Drury Lane, Short's 
Gardens on the left takes us across Endell Street 
and Neal Street to the spot known as Seven Dials, 
where seven roads converge. The place is entirely 
altered since the days of Dickens, when even as a 
boy he was so much attracted to it. Forster tells 
us "he had a profound attraction of repulsion to 
St. Giles's. If he could only induce whosoever 
took him out to take him through Seven Dials, he 
was supremely happy. ' Good Heaven ! ' he would 
exclaim, ' what wild visions of prodigies of wicked- 
ness, want and beggary, arose in my mind out of 
that place ! ' " 

A whole chapter in Sketches by Boz is devoted to 
this district : " Where is there such another maze 
of streets, courts, lanes and alleys ? " he asks ; and, 



COVENT GARDEN TO EUSTON 91 

although Shaftesbury Avenue demolished many of 
these courts and lanes, the district is still an un- 
savoury one. In Nicholas Nickleby, too, we are in- 
troduced to " that labyrinth of streets which lies 
between Seven Dials and Soho," and to the cellar 
of a house where Nicholas and Kate discovered Mr, 
Mantalini goaded by his nagging companion to turn 
the mangle. " I am perpetually turning like a 
demn'd old horse in a demnition mill. My life is 
one demn'd horrid grind ! " 

Through St. Andrew's Street on the right we reach 
the top end of Shaftesbury Avenue, which demolished 
Monmouth Street, "the only true and real emporium 
of second-hand wearing apparel/ 1 which formed 
another subject in Sketches by Boz. High Street 
goes off to the left and takes us past St. Giles' 
Church, and into New Oxford Street, where we turn 
to the right ; and at the fork we leave the main 
road running to Holborn (Route Two) and keep to 
the left along Hart Street, passing St. George's 
Church, where The Bloomsbury Christening took 
place (Sketches by Boz). Bury Street to the left 
leads into Great Russell Street and the British 
Museum, where Dickens as a young man was an 
assiduous attendant at its reading-room. At No. 
14 Great Russell Street, Mr. Charles Kitterbell 
lived, as described in the above-mentioned story. 

We turn to the right along Great Russell Street, 
and then left into Southampton Row. The first 
on the right leads into Great Ormond Street, where 
is situated the Hospital for Sick Children, where 
Little Johnny died with a kiss for the " boofer 
Lady/' " At the Children's Hospital, the Gallant 
Steed, The Noah's Ark, the Yellow Bird and the 
Officer in the Guards, were made as welcome as their 
child owner." 

Before writing Our Mutual Friend, Dickens had 
taken a personal interest in this hospital, and in 



92 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

1858 took the chair at a dinner held on its behalf, 
at which he made an eloquent appeal for funds. 
Forster in his Life of Dickens has recorded the 
following : 

An enterprise had been set on foot for estab- 
lishment of a hospital for sick children ; a large 
old-fashioned mansion in Great Ormond Street, 
with spacious garden, had been fitted up with 
more than thirty beds; during the four or five 
years of its existence, outdoor and indoor relief 
had been afforded by it to nearly fifty thousand 
children, of whom thirty thousand were under 
five years of age; but, want of funds having 
threatened to arrest the merciful work, it was 
resolved to try a public dinner by way of chari- 
table appeal, and for president the happy choice 
was made of one who had enchanted everybody 
with the joys and sorrows of little children. 
Dickens threw himself into the service heart and 
soul. There was a simple pathos in his address 
from the chair quite startling in its effect at such 
a meeting, and he probably never moved any 
audience so much as by the strong personal 
feeling with which he referred to the sacrifices 
made for the Hospital by the very poor them- 
selves : from whom a subscription of fifty pounds, 
contributed in single pennies, had come to the 
treasurer during almost every year it had been 
open. 

The sum of three thousand pounds was raised 
that night as a result, and a short time afterwards 
Dickens gave a reading of the Carol on its behalf, 
the great success of which led him to commence the 
series of Public Readings he gave so successfully 
both in this country and in America until his death. 
The next turning on the right in Southampton 
Row is Guilford Street, in which is situated the 
Foundling Hospital, to which we are first introduced 



COVENT GARDEN TO EUSTON 93 

in the story The Boarding House in Sketches by Boz, 
where we are informed, " The clock of new St. 
Pancras' Church struck twelve ; and the Foundling 
with laudable politeness did the same ten minutes 
afterwards/' To the slowness of this clock Dickens 
makes another reference in No Thoroughfare : 

What is this clock slower than most of the rest, 

and nearer to the ear, that lags so far behind 

to-night as to strike into the vibration alone ? 

This is the clock of the Hospital for Foundling 

Children. Time was when the Foundlings were 

received without question in a cradle at the gate. 

Time is, when enquiries are made respecting them, 

and they are taken as by favour from the mothers 

who relinquish all natural knowledge of them 

and claim to them for evermore. 

The story of No Thoroughfare opens in the 

Foundling Hospital and a very dramatic scene is 

pictured where the mother prevails upon one of the 

servants to point out her son. 

Tattycoram in Little Dorrit came from the Found- 
ling Hospital, to which Mr. Meagles refers as follows : 
" You have heard of the Foundling Hospital 
in London ? . . . Well, one day when we 
took Pet to church there to hear the music . . . 
mother began to cry so that it was necessary 
to take her out. ... 4 Oh dear, dear/ cried 
mother . . . ' when I saw all those children 
... I thought, does any wretched mother 
ever come here . . . and look among those 
young faces, wondering which is the poor child 
she brought into this forlorn world/ " 
Returning to Southampton Row, we turn to the 
right at the Hotel Russell to Woburn Place, referred 
to in Sketches of Young Gentlemen : " We were to 
make for Chigwell . . . and to start from the 
residence of the projectors, Woburn Place, Russell 
Square/' 



94 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

Keeping along Woburn Place, we reach on the 
right Coram Street, down which we shall turn, but 
on the left, a little further on, it may be noted, is 
Tavistock Square, in which was once situated 
Tavistock House, where Dickens lived for nearly 
ten years, from 1851, leaving it for Gad's Hill 
Place. 

Coram Street was formerly Great Coram Street, and 
is described in The Boarding House as " somewhere 
in that partially explored tract of country which 
lies between the British Museum and a remote 
village called Somers Town/ 7 
We are further informed : 

The house of Mrs. Tibbs was, decidedly, the 
neatest in all Great Coram Street. The area and 
the area-steps, and the street-door and the street- 
door steps, and the brass handle, and the door- 
plate, and the knocker, and the fan-light, were 
all as clean and bright as indefatigable white- 
washing, and hearth-stoning, and scrubbing and 
rubbing, could make them. The wonder was, 
that the brass door-plate, with the interesting 
inscription " MRS. TIBBS," had never caught 
fire from constant friction, so perseveringly was 
it polished. There were meat-safe-looking blinds, 
in the parlour-windows, blue and gold curtains 
in the drawing-room, and spring-roller blinds, 
as Mrs. Tibbs was wont in the pride ol her heart 
to boast, " all the way up." 
From Coram Street we turn left along Hunter 
Street, which continues into Judd Street, and at 
No. 78 on the right is Cromer Street, where at 
No. 116 we find the Boot Tavern on the site of the 
old " Boot " of Barnaby Rudge. 

As they were thirsty by this time, Dennis 
proposed that they should repair together to 
the Boot, where there was good company and 
strong liquor. Hugh yielding a ready assent, 



COVENT GARDEN TO EUSTON 95 

they bent their steps that way with no loss of 
time. This Boot was a lone house of public 
entertainment, situated in the fields at the back 
of the Foundling Hospital ; a very solitary spot 
at that period, and quite deserted after dark. 
The tavern stood at some distance .from any 
high road, and was approachable only by a dark 
and narrow lane. 

Returning to Judd Street we keep to the right 
and emerge in the Euston Road, where we turn 
left. At the corner of Woburn Place, on the left, 
stands New St. Pancras' Church, whose clock is 
referred to in the extract quoted in reference to the 
Foundling Hospital 

Euston Station is almost opposite, and Route Six 
to Camden Town can be continued from this point. 



ITINERARY AND REFERENCES 
ROUTE FIVE 



COVENT GARDEN TO EUSTON 



Covent Garden 

Life 

Uncommercial, i, 3, 21 
Dornt, I, 13, 14 
Barnaby, 28 

Tavistock Street 

Sketches : Minns 

Tavistock Hotel (on site of Piazza 
Hotel) 

Life 

Copperfield, 24 

Miscell. P. . Stopped Growing 

Hummums Hotel (rebuilt) 

Expectations, 34, 45 
Sketches : Streets 

King Street 

Miscell. P. : Stopped Growing 

Covent Garden Market 

Expectations, 21 
Chuzzlewit, 40 
Twist, 43, 19 
Copperfield, n, 24, 33, 55 
Curiosity, i 
Pickwick, 47 
Mutual, IV, 9 
Uncommercial, 13, 16 
Sketches : Streets 

Bow Street Police Court 

Twist, 43 
Barnaby, 58 
Uncommercial, 4 
Copperfield, 48 
Expectations, 16 
Sketches : Prisoners' Van 



Covent Garden Theatre 

Life 

Lirriper 

Copperfield, 19, 24 

Broad Court 

Nickleby, 30 

Long Acre 

Uncommercial, 10 
Sketches : Brokers 
Curiosity, 8 

St. Martin's Hall. 

Life 

Drury Lane Theatre 

Nickleby, 14, 25 
Pickwick, 44 
Sketches : Dounce 
Uncommercial, 4 
Sketches : Private Theatres 

Drury Lane 

Copperfield, n 

Curiosity, 7, 8 

Sketches, Pawnbrokers ; 

Brokers ; Gin Shops 
Bloomsbury 
Shabby Genteel 

Catherine Street 

Uncommercial, 4 
Sketches : Theatres 

Russell Court (site) 

Bleak House, n, 16, 39 

Great Queen Street 

Sketches : Dinners 
Curiosity, 8 



COVENT GARDEN TO EUSTON 



97 



Freemasons' Tavern 

Life 

Sketches : Dinners 

Seven Dials 

Life 

Sketches : Seven Dials 

Nickleby, 64 

Mo n mouth Street (site) 
Sketches 

St. Giles's Church. 

Life 

Reprinted, Field 
Gone Astray 
Uncommercial, 10 
Barnaby, 44 
Sketches 

Hart Street 

Sketches : Bloomsbury 

St. George's Church 

id. 

British Museum 

Life 
Sunday 

Sketches, Shabby Genteel 
,, Boarding House 



Great Russell Street 

Sketches : Bloomsbury 

Children's Hospital 

Life 

Mutual, II, 9 

Foundling Hospital 

Sketches : Boarding 
Barnaby, 38 
No Thoroughfare 
Dorr it, I, 2 

Woburn Place 

Young Gentlemen 

Tavistock Square 

Pickwick, 31 

Tavistock House (site) 

Dickens lived here 1851-60 

Coram Street 

Sketches : Boarding 

Cromer Street (site of Boot 
Tavern) 

Barnaby, 38 

New St. Pan eras' Church 

Sketches : Boarding 



ROUTE SIX 

YOUTHFUL HAUNTS AND RAILWAY DAYS 
(EUSTON STATION TO CAMDEN TOWN) 

EXCEPT to those who already know its personal 
Dickens interest, a route attaching to Euston and 
Camden Town may strike the reader as savouring 
too much of the railway and not enough of the coach, 
with which Dickens is usually associated. And the 
reader is right ; yet Dickens was of the railway 
era, and wrote of the iron horse, though never with 
the same charm as when writing of the horse of flesh 
and blood. Euston, King's Cross and Camden Town 
were the great termini that Dickens saw under 
construction, and in this ramble we shall briefly 
review some of his remarks on railways from Dombey 
and Son (in which Carker is killed on the railway) 
and Miscellaneous Papers, whilst traversing a dis- 
trict that was also very intimately associated with 
his boyhood. 

Passing in front of Euston Station in a westerly 
direction we soon reach, on the left, Gower Street, 
where on the site of Maple's premises formerly stood 
No. 4 Gower Street North, where the Dickens family 
lived for a short time in 1824. They had been in 
the Bayham Street house just a year, and no school 
had been found for Charles ; the family were in 
difficulties and removed to Gower Street, where the 
mother tried to start a young ladies' school, just as 
Mrs. Micawber did years after. Forster describes 
the position for us very clearly ; 



YOUTHFUL HAUNTS 99 

A house was soon found at number four, 
Gower Street North' ; a large brass plate on the 
door announced Mrs. Dickens's establishment ; 
and the result I can give in the exact words of 
the then small actor in the comedy whose hopes 
it had raised so high : "I left, at a great many 
other doors, a great many circulars calling atten- 
tion to the merits of the establishment. Yet 
nobody ever came to the school, nor do I recollect 
that anybody ever proposed to come, or that the 
least preparation was made to receive anybody. 
But I know that we got on very badly with the 
butcher and baker ; that very often we had not 
too much for dinner ; and that at last my 
father ws arrested." 

The interval between the sponging-house and 
the prison was passed by the sorrowful lad in 
running errands and carrying messages for the 
prisoner, delivered with swollen eyes and through 
shining tears ; and the last words said to him 
by his father before he was finally carried to the 
Marshalsea were to the effect that the sun was 
set upon him for ever. 

On the right of Euston Road, opposite Gower 
Street, is George Street, on the right of which and 
leading to Euston Station is Drummond Street, 
where, at No. 47, " the mistaken milliner/' Miss 
Martin, lived. Keeping straight ahead along George 
Street we arrive in Hampstead Road ; opposite 
is the Sol's Arms, reminiscent of a house of that name 
in Chancery Lane, mentioned in Bleak House 
(see Route One). As this is the only Sol's Arms in 
London, Dickens, no doubt, transferred the name 
from the Hampstead Road to Chancery Lane. 

Turning to the right in Hampstead Road we pass 
on the left at the corner of Granby Street the house 
at which Dickens went to school after his father had 
come out of the Marshalsea Prison and brighter 



ioo THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

days shone on the family. It was called Wellington 
House Academy, and, except that the railway has 
cut off a portion of the building, it is the same as it 
was a century ago. Dickens himself has left this 
record : 

I went as day scholar to Mr. Jones's establish- 
ment, which was in Mornington Place, and had 
its schoolroom sliced away by the Birmingham 
Railway, when that change came about. The 
schoolroom, however, was not threatened by 
directors or civil engineers then, and there was a 
board over the door graced with the words, 
Wellington House Academy. 
Writing later in Reprinted Pieces, he further tells 
us : 

We went to look at the place only this last 
midsummer, and found that the railway had cut 
it up, root and branch. A great trunk line had 
swallowed the playground, sliced away the school- 
room, and pared off the corner of the house, 
which, thus curtailed of its proportions, presented 
itself in a green stage of stucco, profile-wise 
towards the road, like a forlorn flat-iron without 
a handle, standing on end. 

A little past Granby Street we take the turning 
on the right, which leads into Harrington Square, 
and keeping straight on reach Seymour Street on 
the right. Turning along here we find on the left 
Johnson Street. At No. 29, now 13, and marked 
with a tablet of the London County Council, Dickens 
lived in 1825, while at Wellington House Academy. 
It is now a Children's Library dedicated to David 
Copperfield. 

The family left Johnson Street for the Polygon 
(see Clarendon Square, page 101). 

Johnson Street is in the district of Somers Town, 
where Snawley, the accomplice of Squeers, lived in 
" a little house one storey high, with green shutters." 



YOUTHFUL HAUNTS 101 

Mr, Squeers took lodgings here because the Saracen's 

Head at Snow Hill, where he usually stopped, 

" having experience of Master Wackford's appetite/' 

had declined to receive him on any other terms than 

as a full-grown customer. At Seymour Street 

Chapel Dickens used to attend service, and in 

connection with Drummond Street, a turning out of 

Seymour Street, we have the following personal 

recollection of Dr. Dawson, one of his schoolfellows : 

I quite remember Dickens on one occasion 

heading us in Drummond Street in pretending 

to be poor boys, and asking the passers-by for 

charity especially old ladies ; one of whom 

told us she " had no money for beggar boys." On 

these adventures, when the old ladies were quite 

staggered by the impudence of the demand, 

Dickens would explode with laughter and take 

to his heels. 

Before reaching Drummond Street, we turn left 
along Charles Street to Clarendon Square, where 
formerly stood a little group of houses called the 
Polygon. Here the Dickens family lived in 1827-8, 
probably as lodgers. In the Polygon also lived 
Harold Skimpole, in Bleak House. 

He lived in a place called the Polygon, in 

Somers Town, where there were at that time a 

number of poor Spanish refugees, walking about 

in cloaks, smoking little paper cigars. ... It 

was in a state of dilapidation quite equal to our 

expectation. Two or three of the area railings 

were gone ; the water-butt was broken ; the 

knocker was loose ; the bell-handle had been 

pulled off a long time, to judge from the rusty 

state of the wire*; and dirty footprints on the 

steps were the only signs of its being inhabited. 

If we continue along the side of the Square to 

Phoenix Street we reach Pancras Road, cross into 

Battle Bridge Road, and so come into York Road. 



102 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

The railway cut up this district in Dickens's 
day, and even lately further changes have been 
made. 

What we now know as King's Cross was prior to 
1830 called Battle Bridge, and it is indelibly associ- 
ated in our minds with the Harmon mounds, which 
are so prominent a feature of Our Mutual Friend. 
ft I live over Maiden Lane way/' Mr. Boffin explained 
to Silas Wegg, " out Holloway direction." 

" Where I live," said Mr. Boffin, " is called 

the Bower. Boffin's Bower is the name Mrs. 

Boffin christened it when we come into it as a 

property. If you should meet with anybody 

that don't know it by that name (which hardly 

anybody does), when you've got nigh upon about 

a odd mile, or say and a quarter, if you like, 

up Maiden Lane, Battle Bridge, ask for Harmony 

Jail, and you'll be put right." 

Maiden Lane is now known as York Road. The 

dust-heaps were a reality and many such did exist 

to the south of King's Cross Station, where the 

Gray s Inn Road begins. 

R. Wilfer, in the same book, also lived in this 
neighbourhood. 

His home was in the Holloway region north 
of London, and then divided from it by fields 
and trees. Between Battle Bridge and that part 
of the Holloway district in which he dwelt was a 
tract of suburban Sahara, where tiles and bricks 
were burnt, bones were boiled, carpets were 
beat, rubbish was shot, dogs were fought, and 
dust was heaped by contractors. . . . 
Mrs. Wilfer, like Mrs. Dickens and Mrs. Micawber, 
had essayed fortune in a Ladies' School, and Mrs. 
Wilfer's was no more successful ; for the man who 
had supplied the brass plate, seeing he had no ex- 
pectation of ever being paid for it, " came himself 
with a pair of pincers, took it off and took it away." 



YOUTHFUL HAUNTS 103 

The Cattle Market partly covers the tea gardens 
of Copenhagen House, mentioned in the Sketches. 

Turning to the right at the end of York Road we 
pass in front of King's Cross Station and bear round 
along Pancras Road. On the right is Old St. Pan- 
eras' Church, where Roger Cly was buried, as de- 
scribed in A Tale of Two Cities, and where Jerry 
Cruncher and his son came later " fishing/' as Jerry 
called it but with a spade : in other words " body 
snatching." 

Further along Pancras Road is Great College 
Street, where we find the Veterinary Hospital. 
This corner is a Pickwick landmark, being mentioned 
in the Tale of the Queer Client. 

They met on the appointed night, and, hiring 
a hackney coach, directed the driver to stop at 
that corner of the Old Pancras Road at which 
stands the parish workhouse. By the time they 
alighted there it was quite dark ; and, proceeding 
by the dead wall in front of the Veterinary 
Hospital, they entered a small by-street, which 
is, or was at that time, called Little College 
Street, and which, whatever it may be now, 
was in those days a desolate place enough, sur- 
rounded by little else than fields and ditches. 
Little College Street, mentioned above, is now 
College Place. To reach it we take the second 
turning on the left in Great College Street, Pratt 
Street, and College Place is the first on the left. 

Here Dickens lodged for a while after the family 
left the Gower Street house and the father and 
mother were in the Marshalsea for debt. In his 
own words Dickens tells the story : 

I was handed over as a lodger to a reduced 
old lady, long known to our family, in Little 
College Street, Camden Town, who took children 
in to board, and had once done so at Brighton ; 
and who, with a few alterations and embellish- 



104 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

ments, unconsciously began to sit for Mrs. 
Pipchin in Dombey when she took in me. 

She had a little brother and sister under her 
care then ; somebody's natural children, who 
were very irregularly paid for ; and a widow's 
little son. The two boys and I slept in the same 
room. My own exclusive breakfast, of a penny 
cottage loaf and a pennyworth of milk, I pro- 
vided for myself. I kept another small loaf, 
and a quarter of a pound of cheese on a particular 
shelf of a particular cupboard, to make my 
supper on when I came back at night. They 
made a hole in the six or seven shillings, I know 
well ; and I was out at the blacking-warehouse 
all day, and had to support myself upon that 
money all the week. I suppose my lodging was 
paid for by my father. I certainly did not pay 
it myself ; and I certainly had no other assistance 
whatever (the making of my clothes, I think, 
excepted) from Monday morning until Saturday 
night. No advice, no counsel, no encourage- 
ment, no consolation, no support, from anyone 
that I can call to mind, so help me God. 
Continuing along Pratt Street we reach Bayham 
Street and turn to the right, passing the almshouses 
mentioned below. The Dickens family lived for a 
year (1823) in Bayham Street on first coming to 
London, at No. 16 (renumbered 141) and demolished 
in 1910. The Bayham Street days had sad memories 
for Dickens, for he had left a kindly schoolmaster 
at Chatham ; and so far no school had been found 
for him in London. Forster thus writes of this time : 
Nevertheless, as time went on, his own educa- 
tion still unconsciously went on as well, under the 
sternest and most potent of teachers ; and, 
neglected and miserable as he was, he managed 
gradually to transfer to London all the dreaminess 
and all the romance with which he had invested 



YOUTHFUL HAUNTS 105 

Chatham. There were then at the top of Bay- 
ham Street some almshouses, and were still there 
when he revisited it with me nearly twenty- 
seven years ago ; and to go to this spot, he 
told me, and look from it over the dust-heaps 
and dock-leaves and fields (no longer there when 
we saw it together) at the cupola of St. Paul's 
looming through the smoke, was a treat that 
served him for hours of vague reflection after- 
wards. 

Bob Cratchit lived in Camden Town, and it is 
thought probable that Dickens had in his mind his 
Bayham Street home when he wrote of the Cratchits' 
home in the Carol. It was undoubtedly in Bayham 
Street that Traddles lodged with Micawber, at a 
house that was " only a storey high above the ground 
floor." 

Traddles . . . lived in a little street near the 
Veterinary College at Camden Town, which was 
principally tenanted, as one of our clerks who 
lived in that direction informed me, by gentle- 
men students, who bought live donkeys, and made 
experiments on those quadrupeds in their private 
apartments. Having obtained from this clerk 
a direction to the academic grove in question, 
I set out, the same afternoon, to visit my old 
schoolfellow. 

I found that the street was not as desirable 
a one as I could have wished it to be for the 
sake of Traddles. The inhabitants appeared 
to have a propensity to throw any little trifles 
they were not in want of into the road ; which 
not only made it rank and sloppy, but untidy, 
too, on account of the cabbage-leaves. The 
refuse was not wholly vegetable either, for I 
myself saw a shoe, a doubled-up saucepan, a 
black bonnet, and an umbrella, in various 
stages of decomposition, as I was looking out 
for the number I wanted. 



106 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

Here the Micawbers, like the Dickens's, had an 
execution put into their house for rent. 

It is only natural that Camden Town should often 
find mention in the novels and writings of Dickens, 
and there are many scattered references mostly 
uncomplimentary. 

The building of the L. & N.W. Railway, Euston 
Station, and the goods yard at Camden, prompted 
Dickens to go into detail on the matter in Dombey 
and Son, where he introduces us to the Toodles 
family at Staggs's Gardens. " This euphonious 
locality was situated in a suburb known by the 
inhabitants of Staggs's Gardens by the name of 
Camberling Town ; a designation which the stranger's 
map of London . . . condenses, with some show 
of reason, into Camden Town. . . . The first shock 
of a great earthquake had, just at that period, 
rent the whole neighbourhood to its centre. . . . 
Houses were knocked down ; streets broken through 
and stopped ; deep pits and trenches dug in the 
ground ... in short, the yet unfinished and 
unopened railroad was in progress. . . . But as 
yet the neighbourhood was shy to own the railroad." 
At a later date, when Walter Gay went to find 
Polly Toodles in Staggs's Gardens, to bring some 
consolation to the dying Paul, he found a great 
change in the place : 

There was no such place as Staggs's Gardens. 
It had vanished from the earth. Where the 
old rotten summer-houses once had stood, 
palaces now reared their heads, and granite 
columns of gigantic girth opened a vista to the 
railway world beyond. The miserable waste 
ground, where the refuse matter had been heaped 
of yore, was swallowed up and gone ; and in 
its frowsy stead were tiers of warehouses, crammed 
with rich goods and costly merchandise. The 
old by-streets now swarmed with passengers 



YOUTHFUL HAUNTS 107 

and vehicles of every kind ; the new streets 
that had stopped disheartened in the mud and 
waggon-ruts formed towns within themselves, 
originating wholesome comforts and conveni- 
ences belonging to themselves, and never tried 
nor thought of until they sprang into existence. 
Bridges that had led to nothing led 'to villas, 
gardens, churches, healthy public walks. The 
carcases of houses, and beginnings of new thor- 
oughfares had started off upon the line at steam's 
own speed, and shot away into the country in 
a monster train. 

A few years after the publication of Dombey, 
Dickens wrote an article entitled An Unsettled 
Neighbourhood (reprinted in Miscellaneous Papers) 
showing how " the railroad has done it all/' 
and that since the railroad came " it has ever 
since been unable to settle down to any one thing, 
and will never settle down again." His reason 
for all the unrest in the district which is plainly 
the Euston-Camden Town district is the one 
word Luggage. " I have come to the conclusion/' 
he says, " that the moment Luggage begins to 
be always shooting about a neighbourhood . . . 
everybody wants to be off somewhere . . . every- 
body has the strongest ideas of its being vaguely 
his or her business to ' go down the line/ " 



ITINERARY AND REFERENCES 
ROUTE SIX 



HUSTON TO CAMDEN TOWN 



Euston Square 

Nickleby, 37 
Sketches : " Milliner 

Gower Street 

At No. 4 Dickens lived 1824 

(site only) 
Pickwick, 31 
Sketches : Characters 

Drummond Street 

Life 

Sketches : Milliner 

Hampstead Road 

Sol's Arms 

Wellington House Academy 

Dickens's school 1825-6 

Johnson Street 

No. 13, Dickens lived 1825-7 

Somers Town 

Pickwick, 22, 20 
Nickleby, 38 
Bleak, 43 
Uncommercial, 10 
Sketches : Streets 
Miscell. P. : Gaslight 

Seymour Street Cbapel 
Life 



Pancras Road 

Sketches : Evans Eagle 
Pickwick, 21 

Battle Bridge (now King's Gross) 

Dombey, 31 
Mutual, I, 4 
Twist, 31 
Sketches : ist May 

Maiden Lane (now York Road) 

New York Road 
Mutual Friend, I, 4, 5 
Sketches : First May 

Copenhagen House 

Sketches : First May 

Old St. Pancras' Church 

Two Cities, II, 14 

St. Pancras Workhouse 

Pickwick, 21 

Veterinary Hospital 

Pickwick, 21 
Copperfield, 27 

Little College Street (now College 
Place) 

Here Dickens lodged 1824 
Pickwick, 21 



Clarendon Square Bayham Street 

Site of the Polygon where Site of No. 141 where Dickens 

Dickens lived in 1827 lived 

Bleak House; 43 Copperfield, 27, 34 

108 



YOUTHFUL HAUNTS 109 

Camden Town Pickwick, 21 

Copperfield, 28 Dombey, 6 

Sketches : MssEvans st>ggs , s Oardens 

6 : Unsettled 



Miscell, P. : Unsettled Neigh- Kentish Town 

bourhood Copperfield, 44 

Carol Barnaby, 16 



ROUTE SEVEN 
DICKENS WAY HOME 

^[BLACKFRIARS TO THE MONUMENT) 

<f 

t 

IN t^iie autobiographical fragment which Forster 
has/ preserved for us in the second chapter of his 
Lhf e of Dickens we read : 

My usual way home was over Blackfriars 
Bridge, and down that turning in the Blackfriars 
Road which has Rowland Hill's Chapel on one 
side and the likeness of a golden dog licking a 
golden pot over a shop-door on the other. . . . 
My old way home by the Borough made me 
cry, after my eldest child could speak. In my 
walks at night I have walked there often since 
then. 

At the time of which Dickens writes, he described 
himself as " such a little fellow with my poor white 
hat, little jacket and corduroy trousers/' working 
at Warren's Blacking Factory, by Hungerford 
Bridge ; his father was in the Marshalsea Prison 
for debt, and a back attic was found for the boy 
Charles "at the house of an Insolvent Court agent, 
who lived in Lant Street in the Borough, where 
Bob Sawyer lodged many years afterwards." 

And so we have this most interesting account of 
his daily walks to guide us in a pilgrimage replete 
with interest, not only with Dickens's fife itself, 
but with the places mentioned in his books. 

We start from the Embankment, at the foot of 
Blackfriars Bridge. 

no 



THE DICKENS WAY HOME in 

Although Murdstone & Grinby's warehouse, 
where David Copperfield washed the bottles in 
company with the same lads who had been young 
Charles's companions, is one and the same as War- 
ren's Blacking Factory, yet Dickens made one great 
alteration he described it as being " down in Black- 
friars," and in so doing uses almost the same words 
as in the autobiographical fragment. (See Route 
Thirteen.) 

Arthur Clennam drove with Daniel Doyce over 
Blackfriars Bridge to the Marshalsea. Hugh broke 
open the Toll House here during the Gordon Riots ; 
but the greatest of all the memories of Blackfriars 
Bridge is that of Poor Jo at Long Vacation time 
finding there " a baking stony corner wherein to 
settle to his repast. And there he sits munching 
and gnawing, and looking up to the great cross on 
the summit of St. Paul's Cathedral until ... he is 
stirred up and told to ' move on/ " 

Unfortunately, the railway bridge across the 
river now blocks out the view of St. Paul's. 

Crossing the bridge we find Union Street on our 
left, graced with the " golden dog licking a golden 
pot over a shop-door " on the right-hand corner. 
On the opposite corner of the road is Rowland Hill's 
Chapel, sadly fallen from its former high position ; 
in turns it has been a metal warehouse, Cinema, 
and Boxing Ring ! 

" There are a great many little low-browed old 
shops in that street and some are unchanged now," 
Dickens tells us. Even after a further lapse of close 
on seventy years, some a few are still "un- 
changed now." 

Dickens goes on to say, " I looked into one a few 
weeks ago, where I used to buy boot-laces on Saturday 
nights, and saw the corner where I once sat down on 
a stool to have a pair of ready-made half-boots 
fitted on." 



H2 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

What an interesting mean street it is although 
the Show Van at a corner is no longer a visitor ; 
but we can conjure up a vision of young Dickens 
going in " with a very motley assemblage to see the 
Fat Pig, the Wild Indian, and the Little Lady." 

The far end of Union Street leads into Southwark 
Bridge Road, and we bear to the right. To the left 
takes us to the bridge itself, but gone is the old iron 
bridge upon which Little Dorrit loved to walk in 
solitude, because, as she explained, " if you go by the 
Iron Bridge . . . there is an escape from the noise 
of the street " ; gone is the toll gate, but not the 
memories of Young John Chivery laying down 
" his penny on the toll plate of the Iron Bridge 
and . . . looking about him for the well-known 
and well-beloved figure "... of Little Dorrit. 
He met her here " towards the Middlesex side . . 
standing still and looking at the water," and here 
declared his hopeless passion. 

It was on the river here that Our Mutual Friend 
opens, with Gaffer Hexam plying his nefarious 
trade " between Southwark Bridge, which is of 
iron, and London Bridge, which is of stone." 

This portion of the road reminds us of another 
personal touch. One day young Charles was taken 
ill at the Blacking Factory, so ill indeed that it was 
decided he must go home. Thus he records the 
incident : 

Bob (who was much bigger and older than I) 
did not like the idea of my going home alone, 
and took me under his protection. I was too 
proud to let him know about the prison ; and 
after making several efforts to get rid of him, 
to all of which Bob Fagin in his goodness was 
deaf, shook hands with him on the steps of a house 
near Southwark Bridge, on the Surrey side, 
making believe that I lived there. As a finishing 
piece of reality in case of him looking back, I 



THE DICKENS WAY HOME 113 

knocked at the door, I recollect, and asked, 
when the woman opened it, if that was Mr. 
Robert Fagin's house. 

A short way further on, on the left, we turn into 
Marshalsea Road. Here, streets on the right and 
left are named Quilp Street, Dorrit Street, and Clen- 
ham Street. In Harrow Street, on the left, is all 
that remains of the Farm House a notorious lodging- 
house visited by Dickens and Inspector Field, and 
close by is a children's playground named Little 
Dorrit's Playground, after the heroine of the book. 
Harrow Street on the right of Marshalsea Road 
leads into Lant Street. 

" There's my lodgings," said Mr. Bob Sawyer, 

" Lant Street, Borough ! It's near Guy's and 

handy for me, you know. Little distance after 

you've passed Saint George's Church turns out 

of the High Street on the right-hand side of the way." 

There is a repose about Lant Street, in the 

Borough, which sheds a gentle melancholy upon 

the soul. There are always a good many houses 

to let in the street : it is a by-street, too, and 

its dullness is soothing. . . . If a man wished to 

abstract himself from the world to remove 

himself from within the reach of temptation 

to place himself beyond the possibility of any 

inducement to look out of the window he 

should by all means go to Lant Street. . . . 

The majority of the inhabitants either direct 
their energies to the letting of furnished apart- 
ments, or devote themselves to the healthful 
and invigorating pursuit of mangling. The 
chief features in the still life of the street are 
green shutters, lodging-bills, brass door-plates, 
and bell-handles ; the principal specimens of 
animated nature, the pot-boy, the muffin youth, 
and the baked-potato man. The population is 
migratory, usually disappearing on the verge 

H 



114 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

of quarter-day, and generally by night. His 

Majesty's revenues are seldom collected in this 

happy valley ; the rents are dubious ; and the 

water communication is very frequently cut off. 

To Dickens's personal connection with Lant 

Street we have already referred. He further tells 

us : 

A bed and bedding were sent over for me, 
and made up on the floor. The little window 
had a pleasant prospect of a timber yard, and, 
when I took possession of my new abode, I 
thought it was Paradise. 

Almost the same description is given of David 
Copperfield's lodging when the Micawbers were in 
the King's Bench, so there is no doubt about its 
also being in Lant Street. 

It was doubtless in Lant Street that Frederick 
Dorrit lodged at Mr. Cripples's Academy, a house 
not far from the Marshalsea, where there were so 
many lodgers " that the door-post seemed to be 
as full of bell-handles as a cathedral organ is of stops." 
On reaching the main road we see St. George's 
Church on the left ; we shall return to the church 
presently ; meanwhile our way lies to the right. 
At the corner of the Borough Road, its site now occu- 
pied by dwellings called Queen's Buildings, stood 
the King's Bench Prison, where Micawber was in- 
carcerated. " The outside of the south wall of that 
place of incarceration on civil process," at which 
Mr. Micawber fixed an appointment with David 
and Traddles on a later occasion, is now only a 
memory. All the incidents Dickens records in his 
autobiographical fragment as occurring to his own 
father in the Marshalsea are transferred by him to 
Mr. Micawber and the King's Bench Prison. 

" The Rules " of King's Bench Prison, referred 
to in Nicholas Nickleby, was a district about three 
miles in circumference, which came as far south 



THE DICKENS WAY HOME 115 

as the Borough High Street. Here some of the 
more favoured debtors lived. Here came Nicholas 
in search of Madeleine Bray's father in " a row of 
mean and not over-cleanly houses . . . not many 
hundred yards from the Obelisk in Saint George's 
Fields." The obelisk now outside Bethlehem Hos- 
pital was replaced by an ornate clock tower some 
years ago ; here, it will be remembered, little 
David Copperfield lost his luggage and his half- 
guinea in starting out for his walk to Dover in 
search of his aunt. (See Route Eight.) 

Opposite Borough Road is Union Road, where 
young John Chivery " assisted his mother in the 
conduct of a snug tobacco business, round the corner 
of Horsemonger Lane/ 1 Since the notorious gaol 
has given place to a recreation ground the name 
of the lane has been altered to Union Road, but 
the little shop, the " rural establishment, one storey 
high, which had the benefit of the air from the 
yards of Horsemonger Lane Gaol and the advantage 
of a retired walk under the wall of that pleasant 
establishment/' is still to be seen at No. 5, although 
it is a shop no longer, and no life-size Highlander 
or even a little one is to be seen " on a bracket 
on the door-post," looking " like a fallen cherub 
that had found it necessary to take to a kilt." 

Dickens witnessed the last public hanging from 
the terrace opposite the prison, and wrote that 
impressive letter to the Times on the I3th Novem- 
ber, 1849, concluding : 

I do not believe that any community can pros- 
per where such a scene of horror and demoraliza- 
tion, as was enacted this morning outside 
Horsemonger Lane Gaol, is presented at the very 
doors of good citizens, and is passed by unknown 
or forgotten. 

" The Church of Saint George in the Borough of 
Southwark " is a well-known Dickens landmark ; 



n6 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

chiefly is it endeared to us through its connection 
with Little Dorrit, who was born in the adjacent 
Marshalsea Prison, and " christened one Sunday 
afternoon, when the turnkey being relieved was off 
the lock ... at the font of Saint George's 
Church," the said turnkey acting as sponsor. On 
the night of " Little Dorrit's Party " she and Maggie 
were locked out of the Marshalsea, and the sexton 
made up a bed for her in the vestry, where there was 
a fire " on account of the painters." Here, too, she 
was married ; and walking out of the church with her 
husband, Arthur Clennam 

They paused for a moment on the steps of the 
portico looking at the fresh perspective of the 
street in the autumn morning sun's bright rays, 
and then went down. Went down into a modest 
life of usefulness and happiness . . . into the 
roaring streets, inseparable and blessed. 
It was the sexton who said, at the signing of the 
register in the vestry : 

This young lady is one of our curiosities. 
. . . Her birth is in what I call the first volume ; 
she lay asleep on this very floor, with her pretty 
head on what I call the second volume ; and she's 
now a-writing her little name as a bride in what 
I call the third volume. 

There is another memory associated with St. 
George's Church ; it is also with " Little Dorrit," 
for we read that her lover, John Chivery, after 
drawing tears from his eyes in silent thoughts 
of a lifelong union with Little Dorrit, was accus- 
tomed to " finish the picture with a tombstone in 
the adjoining churchyard, close against the prison 
wall," on which, following his own name, would be 
inscribed, " Also of his truly beloved and truly 
loving wife Amy . . . who breathed her last in 
the Marshalsea. . . . There she was born, there 
she lived, there she died," 



THE DICKENS WAY HOME 117 

After his momentous interview and declaration 
on Southwark Bridge, when he was delicately turned 
aside and asked never to refer to the matter again, 
we read of him " creeping along by the worst back- 
streets and composing as he went a new inscription 
for a tombstone in St. George's Churchyard, declaring 
how he died " of a broken heart, requesting with his 
last breath that the word Amy might be inscribed 
over his ashes." 

On the wall of the churchyard are two interesting 
tablets connecting Dickens with the spot, inscribed : 
This Site was originally the 

Marshalsea Prison, 
made famous by the late 

Charles Dickens, 
in his well-known work, 

" Little Dorrit " 

Appropriately enough, these tablets are on the 
outer wall of the old Debtors' Prison, and the old 
buildings to the left are a portion of the quarters 
of the debtors, and associated in our minds with the 
room in which "The Child of the Marshalsea" was 
born. 

Thirty years ago there stood, a few doors 
short of the church of Saint George, in the borough 
of Southwark, on the left-hand side of the way 
going southward, the Marshalsea Prison. It 
had stood there many years before, and it 
remained there some years afterwards ; but it is 
gone now, and the world is none the worse 
without it. 

It was an oblong pile of barrack building, 

partitioned into squalid houses standing back 

to back, so that there were no back rooms ; 

environed by a narrow paved yard, hemmed in 

by high walls duly spiked on top. 

Turning into Borough High Street, we can find 

the other side of the wall by passing through Angel 



u8 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

Court, to which Dickens thus refers in the preface 
to Little Dorrit : 

Wandering . . . down . . . Angel Court 
... I came to Marshalsea Place, the houses in 
which I recognised, not only as the great block 
of the former prison, but as preserving the 
rooms that arose in my mind's eye when I 
became Little Dorrit's biographer. . . . 

Whosoever goes into Marshalsea Place, turning 
out of Angel Court leading to Bermondsey, will 
find his feet on the very paving stones of the 
extinct Marshalsea Gaol ; will see its narrow yard 
to the right and to the left, very little altered, 
if at all, except that the walls were lowered 
when the place got free ; will look upon the rooms 
in which the debtors lived ; will stand among 
the crowding ghosts of many miserable years. 
So it was in 1857 there is very little change in 
the place to-day : the printing works on the right 
are actually in the rooms occupied by the debtors 
of old ; except that the partitions have been re- 
moved, to make the place more suitable for business 
purposes. 

The Marshalsea also formed the subject of one of 
the stories told in Pickwick, " The Old Man's Tale 
about the Queer Client." 

In the Borough High Street, near St. George's 
Church, and on the same side of the way, stands, 
as most people know, the smallest of our debtors' 
prisons the Marshalsea. 

And then follows what is really a personal note, 
one of the first uttered by Dickens on his connection 
with the place : 

It may be my fancy, or it may be that I 
cannot separate the place from the old recollec- 
tions associated with it, but this part of London 
I cannot bear. 
Forster tells us that, when Charles had his "little 



THE DICKENS WAY HOME 119 

paradise " in Lant Street, " he used to breakfast 
' at home/ in other words, in the Marshalsea, going 
to it as early as the gates were open, and for the most 
part much earlier/ 1 The family were waited on by 
the same little waiting-maid as they had had at 
Camden Town ; she was the original of the 
Marchioness. " She, too, had a lodging in the neigh- 
bourhood/' continues Forster, " that she might be 
early on the scene of her duties ; and when Charles 
met her, as he would do occasionally, in his lodging- 
place by London Bridge, he would occupy the time 
before the gates opened by telling her quite aston- 
ishing fictions about the wharves and the Tower. 
' But I hope I believed them myself/ he would say. 
Besides breakfast, he had supper also in the Prison ; 
and got to his lodging generally by nine o'clock. 
The gates closed always at ten/' 

Returning to the Borough and walking towards 
London Bridge, we are reminded how that : 

Mr. F.'s aunt, publicly seated on the steps of 
the Marshal's official residence, had been for two 
or three hours a great boon to the younger 
inhabitants of the Borough, whose sallies of 
humour she had considerably flushed herself by 
resenting, at the point of her umbrella, from 
time to time. 

We can picture, too, the pie-shop to which Flora 
took Little Dorrit and Mr. F/s Aunt, as an excuse 
for conversation, as being one of these old shops 
on the left-hand side. Flora proposed to Little 
Dorrit 

an adjournment to any place . . . even if 
not a pie-shop . . . and a back parlour, 
though a civil man . . . your good nature 
might excuse under pretence of three kidney 
ones, the humble place of conversation. . . . 
Flora accordingly led the way across the road 
to the pie-shop in question . . when the three 



120 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

kidney ones were set before them on three little 
tin platters, each kidney one ornamented with 
a hole at the top into which the civil man poured 
hot gravy out of a spouted can. 
In the account of Bob Sawyer's party at his lodg- 
ings in Lant Street, we are informed that the ham 
" was from the German-sausage shop round the 
corner/' (May it not have been the very same pie- 
shop associated with Little Dorrit ?) And that 
" Mr. Bob Sawyer had himself purchased the 
spirits at a wine vaults in High Street, and had 
returned home preceding the bearer thereof to 
preclude the possibility of their delivery to the 
wrong house." 

We can picture, too, Mr. Ben Allen, returning 
after seeing Mr. Pickwick on his way home after the 
party at Lant Street : 

Mr. Ben Allen . . . made the best of his way 
back, knocked double knocks at the door of the 
Borough Market Office, and took short naps on 
the steps alternately until daybreak, under the 
firm impression that he lived there and had 
forgotten the key. 

Another link with the Borough is in the last 
chapter of Bamaby Rudge, where we are told that 
Gashford was found dead in his bed at an obscure 
inn in the Borough, where he was quite unknown. 
But the glory of the Borough to-day is the quaint 
old George Inn, mentioned only once in Dickens 
(in Little Dorrit), but bringing back to us most vividly 
all the romance that is woven around the coaching 
inns of old ; the gallery, the court-yard, the tap- 
room, the bar, the coffee-room, all so delightfully 
reminiscent of so many descriptions Dickens has 
left us of a phase of life that is no more and con- 
sequently invested with a halo. 

The introduction of Sam Weller in Pickwick is 
thus heralded : 



THE DICKENS WAY HOME 121 

In the Borough especially, there still remain 
some half-dozen old inns, which have preserved 
their external features unchanged. . . . Great, 
rambling, queer, old places they are, with 
galleries, and passages, and staircases, wide 
enough and antiquated enough to furnish material 
for a hundred ghost stories, supposing we should 
ever be reduced to the lamentable necessity of 
inventing any, and that the world should 
exist long enough to exhaust the innumerable 
veracious legends connected with old London 
Bridge, and its adjacent neighbourhood on the 
Surrey side. 

It was in the yard of one of these inns of no 
less celebrated a one than the White Hart 
that a man was busily employed in brushing 
the dirt off a pair of boots. 

The " White Hart " exists in name only, a few 
doors beyond the George, whilst remains of the other 
old inns Dickens referred to in the above quotation 
are still to be seen in the Borough High Street, 
mostly in the shape of the inn yard and the old 
name. 

St. Thomas's Street close by leads to Guy's Hos- 
pital, where Bob Sawyer was a medical student, 
" a carver and cutter of live people's bodies," as 
Mrs. Raddle called him. 

Passing under the railway arch, we arrive on 
London Bridge. 

The River Thames about London Bridge is often 
described by Dickens. Our Mutual Friend opens 
on it " as an autumn evening was closing in." 
In Barnaby Rudge we read that Mr. Haredale, 
when in hiding at his lodging in Vauxhall, " usually 
came to London Bridge from Westminster by water, 
in order that he might avoid the busy streets." 

Betsey Trotwood " was quite gracious on the sub- 
ject of the Thames," which, we are told, " really 



122 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

did look very well with the sun upon it, though not 
like the sea before the cottage." And in Great 
Expectations it figures in the exploit of Pip .to get his 
benefactor safely aboard the Continental-bound 
steamer in the reaches below Gravesend. 

" Choose your bridge, Mr. Pip/ 1 said Wemmick 
on one occasion, " and take a walk upon your 
bridge, and pitch your money into the Thames 
over the centre arch of your bridge and you 
know the end of it." 

In Martin Chmzlewit we read in the disclosures of 
Nadgett that Jonas Chuzzlewit, after the murder, 
changed his clothes and came out of his house " with 
a bundle . . . and went down the steps at London 
Bridge and sank it in the river." 

This no doubt occurred on the opposite side 
(the Middlesex side) to the well-remembered steps 
where Nancy made her disclosures to Rose Maylie 
and Mr. Brownlow. 

The steps . . . were those which, on the 
Surrey bank, and on the same side of the bridge 
as Saint Saviour's Church, form a landing- 
stairs from the river. . . . These stairs are a 
part of the bridge ; they consist of three flights. 
Just below the end of the second, going down, 
the stone wall on the left terminates in an 
ornamental pilaster facing towards the Thames. 
At this point the lower steps widen so that a 
person turning that angle of the wall is necessarily 
unseen by any others on the stairs who chance 
to be above him, if only a step. 
Here it was that Noah Claypole hid, heard Nancy's 
story, and disclosed it to Fagin, resulting in Nancy's 
murder at the brutal hands of Sikes. 

London Bridge itself, a youthful haunt of young 
Charles Dickens, as we have shown, often figures in 
the adventures of his later heroes ; and a crowd of 
characters cross this historic thoroughfare. 



THE DICKENS WAY HOME 123 

The elder Rudge crossed London Bridge for the 
City and Smithfield, after leaving the widow's house, 
which was " in a by-street in Southwark, not far 
from London Bridge." 

Riah, the kind Jew, in Our Mutual Friend, 
" passed over London Bridge, and returned to the 
Middlesex shore by that of Westminster," recrossing 
it later the same evening with Jenny Wren. Pip 
crossed London Bridge in an agony after hearing 
that Estella was to be married to Bently Drummle, 
to receive at Whitefriars Gate in the Temple Wem- 
mick's laconic message, " Don't go home." 

It was while accompanying the Pickwickians to 
London Bridge on their way home from Bob Saw- 
yer's party that Mr. Ben Allen confided to Mr. 
Winkle that " he was resolved to cut the throat of 
any gentleman, except Mr. Bob Sawyer, who should 
aspire to the affections of his sister Arabella." 

David Copperfield made his first acquaintance with 
London Bridge in the company of Mr. Mell, who met 
him at the inn in Whitechapel where the Yarmouth 
coach stopped, and conveyed him to Salem House 
on Blackheath. 

We went on through a great noise and uproar 
. . . and over a bridge which, no doubt, was 
London Bridge. (Indeed I think he told me so, 
but I was half asleep.) 

The almshouses they visited, when Mr. Mell 
played his flute to his old mother and Mrs. Fibbitson, 
were probably in the neighbourhood of the Borough, 
where several almshouses once existed. We are 
told that "by an inscription on a stone over the 
gate . . . they were established for twenty-five 
poor women." 

A year or two later, when Mr. and Mrs. Micawber 
were in the Marshalsea, and David was working at 
the Bottle Factory, we read : 

My favourite lounging place was old London 



124 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

Bridge, where I was wont to sit in one of the 
stone recesses, watching the people going by, 
or to look over the balustrades at the sun shining 
in the water and lighting up the golden flame 
on the top of the Monument. 

... as I walked to and fro daily between 
Southwark and Blackfriars, and lounged about 
at meal-times in obscure streets, the stones of 
which may, for anything I know, be worn at 
this moment by my childish feet. I wonder how 
many of these people were wanting in the crowd 
that used to come filing before me in review 
again. . . . When my thoughts go back now 
... I wonder how much of the histories I 
invented for such people hangs like a mist of 
fancy over well-remembered facts. When I 
tread the old ground, I do not wonder that I 
seem to see and pity going on before me an in- 
nocent, romantic boy, making his imaginative 
world out of such strange experience and 
sordid things. 

Looking down the river, one of the many wharves 
beyond Tower Bridge may well be associated with 
Quilp's Wharf, which, we are told, was opposite 
his house on Tower Hill, " on the Surrey side of the 
river . , . a small, rat-infested, dreary yard . . 
in which were a little wooden counting-house 
burrowing all awry in the dust/' 

This must have been quite adjacent to Jacob's 
Island, where Bill Sikes met his terrible end. Here 
is Dickens's description from Oliver Twist : 

" Near to that part of the Thames on which 
the church at Rotherhithe abuts . . . beyond 
Dockhead, in the Borough of Southwark, stands 
Jacob's Island, surrounded by a muddy ditch, 
six or eight feet deep and fifteen or twenty wide 
when the tide is in, once called Mill Pond, but 
known in these days as Folly Ditch. It is a 



THE DICKENS WAY HOME 125 

creek or inlet from the Thames, and can always 

be filled at high water by opening the sluices 

at the lead mills, from which it took its old name. 

At such times, a stranger, looking from one of 

the wooden bridges thrown across it at Mill 

Lane, will see the inhabitants of the houses on 

either side lowering from their back doors and 

windows buckets, pails, domestic utensils of 

all kinds, in which to haul the water up." 

The house was situated at the back of what is 

now No. 18 Eckell Street, off Mill Street, in a court 

called Metcalf Court, now the stables and yard of a 

firm of carmen. 

On the City side of London Bridge we find, on the 
right, Fresh Wharf, undoubtedly the place where 
Mrs. Gamp was enquiring for " The Ankworks 
package," wishing it " was in Jonadge's belly." 

The first turning on the right after the end of the 
bridge leads to Fish Street Hill, where David 
Copperfield on his return from abroad noticed an old 
house had been pulled down ; he had " walked from 
the Custom House to the Monument before finding 
a coach." 

Here is the Monument, which, as Mr. F/s aunt 
sagely remarks, " was put up arter the great Fire 
of London . . . not the fire in which your Uncle 
George's workshops was burned down ! " This 
was the place of " no temptation " recommended by 
the elder Willet to his son, when he gave him 
" sixpence ... to spend in the diversions of 
London " the diversions he recommended being 
"to go to the top of the Monument and sitting 
there." 

Tom Pinch came up from Salisbury, it will be 
remembered, lost his way and " found himself at 
last hard by the Monument," and found " the man 
in the Monument quite as mysterious a being as the 
man in the moon." That he was a cynic was evi- 



126 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

denced by his remark after a customer had paid his 
humble ' tanner " for admission : 

" They don't know what a many steps there is, 
. . . It's worth twice the money to stop here. 
Oh my eye ! " 

It has always been a regret that the " kind of 
paved yard near the Monument," which sheltered 
the commercial boarding-house of Mrs. Todgers in 
Martin Chuzzlewit, has never been identified, so that 
its site could be pointed out to the pilgrim ! 

Surely there never was, in any other borough, 
city or hamlet in the world, such a singular sort 
of a place as Todgers's. And surely London, 
to judge from that part of it which hemmed 
Todgers's round, and hustled it, and crushed it, 
and stuck its brick-and-mortar elbows into it, 
and kept the air from it, and stood perpetually 
between it and the light, was worthy 01 Todgers's, 
and qualified to be on terms of close relationship 
and alliance with hundreds and thousands of 
the odd family to which Todgers's belonged. 
You couldn't walk about Todgers's neighbour- 
hood as you could in any other neighbourhood. 
You groped your way for an hour through lanes, 
and by-ways, and court-yards, and passages ; 
and you never once emerged upon anything 
that might be reasonably called a street. 

A kind of resigned distraction came over the 
stranger as he trod those devious mazes, and, giving 
himself up for lost, went in and out and round 
about and quietly turned back again when he 
came to a dead wall or was stopped by an iron 
railing, and felt that the means of escape might 
possibly present themselves in their own good time, 
but that to anticipate them was hopeless. 
Instances were known of people who, being asked 
to dine at Todgers's, had travelled round and 
round for a weary time, with its very chimney- 



THE DICKENS WAY HOME 127 

pots in view, and finding it, at last, impossible 
of attainment, had gone home again with a 
gentle melancholy on their spirits, tranquil 
and uncomplaining. Nobody had ever found 
Todgers's on a verbal direction, though given 
within a few minutes' walk of it. ... To tell 
of half the queer old taverns that had a drowsy 
and secret existence near Todgers's would fill 
a goodly book ; while a second volume no less 
capacious might be devoted to an account of the 
quaint old guests who frequented their dimly 
lighted parlours. These were, in general, ancient 
inhabitants of that region ; born, and bred there 
from boyhood ; who had long since become 
wheezy and asthmatical. . . . These gentry were 
much opposed to steam and all newfangled ways, 
and held ballooning to be sinful, and deplored 
the degeneracy of the times, which that parti- 
cular member of each little club who kept the 
keys of the nearest church professionally 
always attributed to the prevalence of Dis- 
sent and irreligion. 

In Monument Yard, Mark Tapley met his old 
neighbours from Eden in America and embraced 
them affectionately, and here Mr. Dorrit's solicitors, 
Peddle & Pool, are described as having their office. 



ITINERARY AND REFERENCES 
ROUTE SEVEN 

BLACKFRIARS TO THE MONUMENT 



Blackfrlars 

Copperfield, n, 46 
Barnaby, 49 
Reprinted, Down-tide 

Blackfriars Bridge 

Copperfield, 46 
Barnaby, 49, 67 
Bleak House, 19, 27 
Dornt, I, 12 
Expectations, 46 
Sketches Tottle 

Scenes, 15 

Blackfriars Road 

Copperfield, 12 

Bleak House, 27 

Life 

(See also Route 8) 

Union Street 

Life 

Rowland Hill's Chapel 

Life 

Golden Dog in Pot 

Life 

Southwark Bridge Road 

Life 

Southwark Bridge 

Life 

Dorrit, I, 9, 18, 22 
Mutual Friend, I, I 
Reprinted, Down-tide 

Caleb Street (site of the Old 
Mint) 

Reprinted, Field 



Marsh alsea Road 

Builp Street 
orrit 
Clennam ,, 

Farm House (site of) 

Reprinted, Inspector Field 

Little Dorrit's Playground 

Lant Street 

Here Dickens lodged 1824 
Pickwick, 30, 32 
Copperfield, n 
Dorrit, 1, 9 

Horsemonger Lane (now Union 
Road) 

Dorrit, I, 18, 22 
Life 

King's Bench Prison (site of) 

Copperfield, n, 12, 49 
Nickleby, 46 
Uncommercial, 13 
Sketches : Brokers' Shops 

The Rules (site) 
Nickleby, 46, 51 
Pickwick, 43 
Sketches : Brokers 

St. George's Church 

Pickwick, 30, 21 

Dorrit, I, 6, 7, 9, 14, 18 ; II, 34 

Sketches : Inspector Field 

Tabard Street (late Kent Street) 

Uncommercial, 13 



128 



THE DICKENS WAY HOME 



I2Q 



The Marshalsea 
Life 

Pickwick, 21 
Dorrit, Pref., I, 6, 8, 36, etc. 

Angel Place (or Court) 
Life 
Dorrit, Pref. 

The Borough 

Pickwick, 10, 21, 30, 32 
Barnaby, 82, 49 
Copperfield, 6, n 
Dorrit, Pref., I, 6, 9, 36 ; II, 34 
Uncommercial, 13 
Reprinted, Inspector Field 

The George Inn 

Dornt, I, 22, 36 

The White Hart Inn 

Pickwick, 10 

Guy's Hospital 

Pickwick, 30, 32 

Borough Market 

Pickwick, 10, 32 

Borough Clink 

Barnaby, 67 

St. Saviour's Church 

Twist, 46 
Uncommercial, 9 

St. Magnus' Church 

Twist, 46 

Southwark 

Life 

Pickwick, 32, 33 
Twist, 50 
Barnaby, 5 
Copperfield, n 
Dorrit, I, 6 
Uncommercial, 9 
Reprinted, Down-tide 
Miscell. P. 



London Bridge Steps 

Twist, 46 
Chuzzlewit, 51 

London Bridge Station 

Reprinted : Flight 

Borough Compter (site) 
Barnaby, 67 

Dockhead 

Uncommercial, 10 
Twist, 50 

Jacob's Island (site) 
Twist, 50 
Uncommercial, 10 

Quilp's Wharf 
Curiosity, 2, 4 

Bermondsey 

Dornt, Preface 
Reprinted: Flight 

Rotherhithe 

Twist, 50 

London Bridge 

Life 

Pickwick, 32 
Twist, 40, 46 
Copperfield, 5, n 
Barnaby, 5, 8, 16, 43, 49 
Expectations, 44, 54 
Mutual, I, i ; III, 2 
Chuzzlewit, 46, 51 
Dorrit, I, 7, 14, 31 ; II, 18 
Uncommercial, 10, n, 13 
Sketches : Scenes, 10 ; Tales. 4 
Miscell. P. 
Reprinted : Down-tide 

Fresh Whart 

Sketches : River 
Chuzzlewit, 40 

Fish Street Hill 

Sketches : Couples 
Copperfield, 59 
Mutual I, 3 



130 



THE LONDON OF DICKENS 



Monument 

Copperfield, 11, 59 
Barnaby, 13 
Dornt, II, 13 
Mutual, I, 3 
Nickleby, i 
Chuzzlewit, 37, 8 



Uncommercial, 9 
Poor Relation 

Monument Yard 
Dorrit, I, 36 

Chuzzlewit, 8, 9, 10, 13, 37, 54 
Uncommercial, o 



ROUTE EIGHT 

THE DOVER ROAD 

(WESTMINSTER TO GREENWICH) 

THE Dover Road had at all times a great attraction 
to Dickens : " There's milestones on the Dover 
Road/' said Mr. F's Aunt and he must have known 
most of them intimately, for Rochester is on the 
Dover Road, and near by is Gad's Hill, his home for 
so many years ; and he often tramped the twenty- 
eight odd miles between London and Gad's Hill. 

Although properly speaking the Dover Road 
commences at the Surrey side of London Bridge and 
traverses the Borough (Route Seven) it is not in- 
correct to measure it over Westminster Bridge, the 
way some of the very earliest stage-coaches made 
the journey, according to an advertisement of 1751. 
That was the way the Pickwickians went to Rochester 
from the Golden Cross at Charing Cross in 1827. 
Mr. Peggotty on his first return to London after his 
search for Little Em'ly found " a traveller's lodging 
on the Dover Road/' and David accompanied him 
over Westminster Bridge and parted from him on 
the Surrey side ; and, in the various ruses employed 
by Pip in Great Expectations to hide the tracks of 
his Uncle Provis, it was given out on one occasion 
that he had gone to Dover, for which purpose 
" he was taken down the Dover Road and cornered 
out of it." Barnaby Rudge, after being enlisted 
by Lord George Gordon on the Bridge, crossed it 
with him and went down Bridge Road to join the 



132 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

throng at St. George's Fields. But perhaps the 
greatest memory of the Dover Road is its association 
with little David's walk to his Aunt's at Dover, 
when he was robbed at the Obelisk, and faint-hearted 
and weary turned about for Greenwich, which he 
" understood was on the Dover Road." 

Crossing Westminster Bridge (see Route Eleven) 
we reach Westminster Bridge Road. Numbers 225 /33 
mark the site of Astley's, and with it go memories 
of the visit paid by Kit and his mother, and Barbara 
and her mother, to say nothing of little Jacob, so 
humorously described in The Old Curiosity Shop. 

Dear, dear, what a place it looked, that 
Astley's ; with all the paint, gilding, and look- 
ing-glass ; the vague smell of horses suggestive 
of coming wonders ; the curtain that hid such 
gorgeous mysteries ; the clean white sawdust 
down in the circus ; the company coming in and 
taking their places ; the fiddlers looking carelessly 
up at i'hem while they tuned their instruments, 
as if they didn't want the play to begin and knew 
it all beforehand ! 

Hard by must have been the oyster shop into 
which, after the performance, Kit walked " as bold 
as if he lived there, and, not so much as looking at 
the counter or the man behind it, led his party into 
a box a private box, fitted up with red curtains, 
white table-cloth, and cruet-stand complete and 
ordered a fierce gentleman with whiskers, who acted 
as waiter and called him, him Christopher Nubbles, 
4 sir ' to bring three dozen of his largest-sized oysters, 
and to look sharp about it ! " 

In Bleak House we read of Trooper George paying 
a visit to Astley's, and, " being there, is much de- 
lighted with the horses and the feats of strength ; 
looks at the weapons with a critical eye ; disapproves 
of the combats, as giving evidences of unskilful 
swordsmanship ; but is touched home by the senti- 
ments/' 



THE DOVER ROAD 133 

Turning along York Road on the left, we reach 
Waterloo Road. At the corner on the right is Water- 
loo Station mentioned more than once in Our Mutual 
Friend one of the few books in which Dickens 
even mentions railways ! Passing urlder the Rail- 
way Arch we reach New Cut and Lambeth Marsh 
with the " Old Vic " on the left. This district is 
referred to more than once in Sketches by Boz and 
The Amusements of the People in Miscellaneous 
Papers. 

It was in " a mean house situated in an obscure 
street, or rather court, near Lambeth " that Squeers 
rented a garret in the same house as Peg Sliderskew, 
and here his plans were thwarted by Nicholas and 
Newman Noggs. 

Waterloo Road ends at St. George's Circus ; to 
the right runs Lambeth Road, in which a short way 
down on the left is Bethlehem Hospital, in front of 
which is the " Obelisk." This previously stood in the 
centre of St. George's Circus, formerly St. George's 
Fields, the scene of the massing of the Gordon 
Rioters as described in Barnaby Rudge. The 
" Obelisk " was and still is one of London's land- 
marks. In Somebody's Luggage Dickens thus 
humorously refers to it : 

Those that are acquainted with London are 
aware of a locality on the Surrey side of the River 
Thames, called the Obelisk, or, more generally, 
the Obstacle. Those that are not acquainted 
with London will also be aware of it, now that 
I have named it." 

But its chief claim to remembrance is the connec- 
tion it has with little David's walk to Dover. Look- 
ing about him for somebody who could carry his 
box from his lodgings in Lant Street to the coach 
office, he found " a long-legged young man with a 
very little empty donkey-cart standing near the 
Obelisk in the Blackfriars Road," and bargained with 



134 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

him to do the job " for a tanner." How the long- 
legged young man not only ran off with the box, 
but with David's half-guinea too, is graphically 
described in chapter twelve : David ran after him 
as fast as he could, and had no breath to call out, 
or continue the chase, so he tells us, " I left the young 
man to go where he would with my box and money ; 
and panting and crying, but never stopping, faced 
about for Greenwich, which I had understood was 
on the Dover Road : taking very little more out of 
the world, towards the retreat of my aunt, Miss 
Betsey, than I had brought into it, on the night when 
my arrival gave her so much umbrage." 

There is a personal association with a house near 

the Obelisk, to which young Dickens had to go for 

an examination at the time his father was put 

in the Marshalsea. It was a condition that the 

wearing apparel and personal matters retained were 

not to exceed twenty pounds sterling in value, 

and he tells us in his Autobiographical fragment : 

" It was necessary, as a matter of form that 

the clothes I wore should be seen by the official 

appraiser. I had a half-holiday to enable me 

to call upon him, at his own time, at a house 

somewhere beyond the Obelisk. I recollect 

his coming out to look at me with his mouth 

full, and a strong smell of beer upon him, and 

saying good-naturedly fhat ' that would do/ 

and ' it was all right/ Certainly the hardest 

creditor would not have been disposed (even if 

he had been legally entitled) to avail himself 

of my poor white hat, little jacket, or corduroy 

trousers. But I had a fat old silver watch 

in my pocket, which had been given me by my 

grandmother before the blacking days, and I had 

entertained my doubts as I went along whether 

that valuable possession might not bring me 

over the twenty pounds. So I was greatly 



THE DOVER ROAD 135 

relieved, and made him a bow of acknowledgment 
as I went out/' 

A little past the Bethlehem Hospital is Kennington 
Road, in which is Walcot Square. Mr. Guppy, in 
proposing to Esther in Bleak House, informed her he 
had taken " a 'ouse ... a hollow bargain (taxes 
ridiculous and use of fixtures included in the rent)." 
He added " I beg to lay the 'ouse in Walcot Square, 
the business and myself, before Miss Summerson 
for her acceptance." 

At this end of the Blackfriars Road on the left is 
the Surrey Theatre, where " Frederick Dorrit played 
... a clarionet as dirty as himself/' and in the 
same theatre Fanny Dorrit used to dance. 

Here it was that on November igth, 1838, an 
unauthorised version of Oliver Twist was staged. 
Dickens attended it, and was so annoyed that 
"in the middle of the first scene he laid himself 
down upon the floor in a corner of the box, and never 
rose from it until the drop-scene fell." 

From St. George's Circus, London Road leads 
to the cross roads known as the Elephant & Castle, 
described in Bleak House as " that ganglion of roads 
from Kent and Surrey, and of streets from the 
bridges of London, centring in the far-famed 
Elephant." To one of the little shops in " a street 
of little shops " near here, came Trooper George 
to visit Mrs. Bagnet, whom he saw, " with her outer 
skirts tucked up, come forth with a small wooden 
tub, and in that tub commence a whisking and 
splashing on the margin of the pavement. Mr. 
George says to himself " She's as usual, washing 
greens. I never saw her, except upon a baggage 
waggon, when she wasn't washing greens." 

Our way lies straight ahead down the New Kent 
Road. On the left is Webb's County Terrace where 
David rested after being robbed of his money and 
his box. 



136 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

For anything I know, I may have had some 
wild idea of running all the way to Dover when 
I gave up the pursuit of the young man with the 
donkey-cart and started for Greenwich. My 
scattered senses were soon collected as to that 
point, if I had ; for I came to a stop in the Kent 
Road, at a terrace with a piece of water before 
it, and a great foolish image in the middle blow- 
ing a dry shell. Here I sat down on a door-step, 
quite spent and exhausted with the efforts I had 
already made, and with hardly breath enough 
to cry for the loss of my box and half-guinea. 
The water and the " image " have disappeared 
from the gardens some thirty years. 

We bear to the right into the Old Kent Road. 
On the right a new building has replaced the old 
Deaf and Dumb Establishment to which Dr. Mari- 
gold took his Sophy for tuition. Somewhere in the 
Old Kent Road was the shop where David sold 
the first portion of his wardrobe. 

The master of this shop was sitting at the door 
in his shirt-sleeves, smoking ; and as there 
were a great many coats and pairs of trousers 
dangling from the low ceiling, and only two 
feeble candles burning inside to show what they 
were, I fancied that he looked like a man of a 
revengeful disposition, who had hung all his 
enemies, and was enjoying himself. 
In this neighbourhood too was no doubt situ- 
ated Bradley Headstone's School in Our Mutual 
Friend. 

Down in that district of the flat country tend- 
ing to the Thames, where Kent and Surrey meet, 
and where the railways still bestride the market- 
gardens that will soon die under them. The 
schools were newly built, and there were so many 
like them all over the country that one might 
have thought the whole were but one restless 



THE DOVER ROAD 137 

edifice with the locomotive gift of Aladdin's 
palace. 

It is some three or four miles to Greenwich, and 
we can take a conveyance the whole length of the 
Old Kent Road to New Cross, and then through 
Deptford to Greenwich. 

We alight at Greenwich Church, where Bella was 
married to John Rokesmith ; or, as Dickens puts it, 
"the church porch, having swallowed up Bella Wilfer 
for ever and ever, had it not in its power to relinquish 
that young woman but slid into the happy sunlight 
Mrs. John Rokesmith instead." 

Church Street continued leads to the River, where 
on the left is the Ship Hotel so full of memories of 
two delightful chapters in Our Mutual Friend, the first 
prior to the marriage, when Bella commanded Pa to 
" take this lovely woman out to dinner." 
" Where shall we go, dear ? " 
" Greenwich." 

The little room overlooking the river into 
which they were shown for dinner was delightful. 
Everything was delightful. The park was de- 
lightful, the punch was delightful, the dishes of 
fish were delightful, the wine was delightful. 

And then, as they sat looking at the ships 
and steamboats making their way to the sea 
with the tide that was running down, the lovely 
woman imagined all sorts of voyages for herself 
and Pa. 
Later on we read : 

The marriage dinner was the crowning success, 
for what had bride and bridegroom plotted to do, 
but to have and to hold that dinner in the very 
room of the very hotel where Pa and the lovely 
woman had once dined together ! . . . What a 
dinner ! Specimens of all the fishes that swim 
in the sea surely had swum their way to it. . . 
And the dishes, being seasoned with Bliss an 



138 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

article which they are sometimes out of at 
Greenwich were of perfect flavour. . . . Never- 
to-be-forgotten Greenwich ! 

Returning to the Church, we turn left along Nelson 
Street, and then first to the right takes us to Green- 
wich Park, to which a chapter in the Sketches is 
devoted : 

The chief place of resort in the day-time . . . 
is the Park, in which the principal amusement is 
to drag young ladies up the steep hill which leads 
to the Observatory, and then drag them down 
again, at the very top of their speed, greatly to 
the derangement of their curls and bonnet-caps, 
and much to the edification of the lookers-on 
from below. 

The road straight ahead, and bearing to the left 
takes us to the Observatory. The road to the right 
from the Observatory takes us out of the Park, across 
a small portion of the Heath into the Shooter's Hill 
Road, where we turn left. 

Blackheath was very well known to Dickens, and, 
as the railway from London to Greenwich was the 
first one built in London it afforded him the oppor- 
tunity of taking train for part of the journey, such 
as he describes in the concluding portion of the 
Seven Poor Travellers in his walk from Rochester 
to London. 

Thus Christmas begirt me, far and near, until 
I had come to Blackheath, and had walked down 
the long vista of gnarled old trees in Greenwich 
Park, and was being steam-rattled through the 
mists now closing in once more, towards the 
lights of London. 

When little David Copperfield was sent to school 
it was to Salem House " down by Blackheath . . . 
a square brick building with wings, of a bare and 
unfurnished appearance." The identity of the 
school has never been discovered. After his mother 



THE DOVER ROAD 139 

died, David was taken from the school and put to 
work in the bottle warehouse ; from this he ran 
away and walked to Dover. After a hard day's 
work, he tells us how he " came climbing out at 
last upon the level of Blackheath. It cctet me some 
trouble to find out Salem House, but I found it, and 
I found a haystack in the corner and I lay down 
under it." 

John Rokesmith and his wife, in Our Mutual 
Friend, had " a modest little cottage, but a bright 
and a fresh/' on Blackheath. 

The main road now ascends Shooter's Hill and 
we have thoughts of " that Friday night in Nov- 
ember, one thousand seven hundred and seventy- 
five," when the Dover Mail "lumbered up Shooter's 
Hill . . . and the guard suspected the passengers, 
the passengers suspected one another and the 
guard, they all suspected everybody else, and the 
coachman was sure of nothing but the horses." 
For a full account of that spirited ride, the reader 
is referred to the second chapter of A Tale of Two 
Cities. 

In the Holly Tree Cobbs informs us that " Master 
Harry Walmers's father lived at the Elmses, down 
away by Shooter's Hill there, six or seven miles 
from Lunnon," and in Pickwick we remember that 
the elder Weller retired on a handsome independence 
to " an excellent public-house near Shooter's Hill, 
where he is quite reverenced as an oracle." 

A reference is made in Sunday under Three Heads 
to the ruined Severndroog Castle built by Lady 
James in 1784 on the summit of the hill. 

Away they go ... to catch a glimpse of the 
rich cornfields and beautiful orchards of Kent ; 
or to stroll among the fine old trees of Greenwich 
Park, and survey the wonders of Shooter's Hill 
and Lady James's Folly. 

Our return from Greenwich can be made to follow 



140 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

our outward route until New Cross Gate is reached. 
Here a bus or tram to Camberwell Green takes us 
through Peckham, where Walter Gay went to a 
weekly boarding school. In the same book, Dombey 
and Son, we read : 

Mr. Feeder spoke of the dark mysteries of 
London and told Mr. Toots that he was going . . . 
to board with two maiden ladies at Peckham. 
Beyond Peckham is Camberwell, in which Mr. 
Pickwick had made " unwearied researches/' Oak 
Lodge, Camberwell, was the home of the Maldertons 
in that delightfully humorous story in Sketches by 
Boz, entitled Horatio Sparkins. 

Years have elapsed since the occurrence of 
this dreadful morning. The daisies have thrice 
bloomed on Camberwell Green ; the sparrows 
have thrice repeated their vernal chirps in 
Camberwell Grove ; but the Miss Maldertons are 
still unmated. 

The tragedy of George Barnwell, who lived in 
Camberwell, was a favourite one with Dickens as 
a boy, for recitations, and several references to it are 
made in the novels. A more direct reference appears 
in Martin Chuzzlewit, when, in speaking of Bailey 
Junior, the boy at Todgers's, we read : 

Benjamin was supposed to be the real name of 
this young retainer, but he was known by a great 
variety of names. Benjamin, for instance, had 
been converted into Uncle Ben, and that again 
had been corrupted into Uncle ; which, by an 
easy transition, had again passed into Barnwell, 
in memory of the celebrated relative in that 
degree who was shot by his nephew George while 
meditating in his garden at Camberwell. 
In Great Expectations, dealing with Mr. Wopsle's 
histrionic abilities, we are told : 

Mr. Wopsle, as the ill-requited uncle of the 
evening's tragedy, fell to meditating aloud in 



THE DOVER ROAD 141 

his garden at Camberwell. ... I kept myself 
to myself and my thoughts. Mr. Wopsle died 
amiably at Camberwell, and exceedingly game 
on Bosworth Field, and in the greatest agonies 
at Glastonbury. 

In the same book Camberwell figures in the 
amusing account of Wemmick's wedding. 

We went towards Camberwell Green, and, when 
we were thereabouts, Wemmick said suddenly : 
" Hallo ! Here's a church ! " 
There was nothing very surprising in that ; 
but, again, I was rather surprised when he said, 
as if he were animated by a brilliant idea : 
" Let's go in ! "... 

" Hallo ! " said Wemmick. " Here's Miss 
Skiffins ! Let's have a wedding ! " 
St George's Church, Camberwell, on the left of 
Camberwell Road, is pointed out as the church in 
question. 

Tom Pinch, and Mr. Pecksniff too, both visited 
the former's sister at a house in Camberwell, where 
she was a governess in a family. 

They lived at Camberwell ; in a house so big 
and fierce that its mere outside, like the outside 
of a giant's castle, struck terror into vulgar minds 
and made bold persons quail. There was a 
great front gate ; with a great bell, whose handle 
was in itself a note of admiration ; and a great 
lodge, which, being close to the house, rather 
spoilt the look-out certainly, but made the 
look-in tremendous. 

In half a mile from Camberwell Green, we are in 
Walworth, but all trace is lost of the delightful cottage 
in which Wemmick lived as described in Great 
Expectations. 

It appeared to be a collection of black lanes, 
ditches, and little gardens, and to present the 
aspect of a rather dull retirement. Wemmick's 



142 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

house was a little wooden cottage in the midst 
of plots of garden, and the top of it was cut out 
and painted like a battery mounted with guns. 
" My own doing/' said Wemmick. " Looks 
pretty, don't it ? " 

I highly commended it. I think it was the 
smallest house I ever saw ; with the queerest 
gothic windows (by far the greater part of them 
sham), and a gothic door, almost too small to 
get in at. 

" That's a real flagstaff, you see," said Wem- 
mick, " and on Sundays I run up a real flag. 
Then look here. After I have crossed this bridge, 
I hoist it up so and cut off the communica- 
tion." 

The bridge was a plank, and it crossed a chasm 
about four feet wide and two deep. But it wa& 
very pleasant to see the pride with which h6 
hoisted it up and made it fast, smiling as he' 
did so. 

The " Walworth Sentiments " of Mr. Wemmick 
are often quoted : 

" My Walworth sentiments must be taken at 
Walworth ; none but my official sentiments 
can be taken in this office." 
Camberwell New Road takes us through Kenning- 
ton to Clapham, which, in conjunction with Brixton 
adjacent, was another of the places in which Mr. 
Pickwick had made his " unwearied researches." 

In the Clapham Road lived the Poor Relation who 
loved to build his castles in the air, in " a very clean 
back room, in a very respectable house, where I am 
expected not to be at home in the day-time unless 
poorly." 

Clapham Rise is mentioned in The Haunted House, 
but No. 2 Tuppintock's Gardens, Liggs's Walk, has 
never been discovered. Also in Clapham Rise, at 
Rose Villa, lived Mr. Gattleton, and here the amateur 



THE DOVER ROAD 143 

theatricals took place, as described in Mrs. Joseph 
Porter in the Sketches ; this is often thought to be 
a slice of Dickens's own life at the age of about 
twenty-one. 

Clapham Common was formerly known as Clapham 
Green. It will be recalled that Mr. Cyrus Bantam 
at Bath thought he recognised in Mr. Pickwick 
" the gentleman residing on Clapham Green who 
lost the use of his limbs from imprudently taking 
cold after port wine/' 

The road continued becomes Balham High Road 
and leads to Tooting. We read in Bleak House 
that the Snagsby's maid 

Guster . . . was farmed, or contracted for, 
during her growing time, by an amiable 
benefactor of his species resident at Tooting. 
Guster was evidently an inmate of the Children's 
Farm conducted by a certain Mr. Drouet at the 
Paradise at Tooting which Dickens exposed at about 
this time ; a full account of which is to be found in 
the Miscellaneous Papers. 

Of all similar establishments on earth, that at 
Tooting was the most admirable. . . . Mr. 
Drouet's farm was the best of all possible farms. 
. . . Mr. Drouet's Paradise at Tooting 1 ... 
The cholera . . . broke out in Mr. Drouet's 
farm for children, because it was brutally con- 
ducted, vilely kept, preposterously inspected, 
dishonestly defended, a disgrace to a Christian 
community, and a stain upon a civilised land. 
From Tooting through Streatham, Norwood is 
reached. Dickens used to visit Hall, his publisher, 
here. " In the green and wooded country near 
Norwood " he located the home of Carker ; and in 
the same locality David Copperfield spent many 
an anxious and delightful hour at the house of Mr. 
Spenlow, in the garden of which he courted Dora. 
I suppose that when I saw Dora in the garden 



144 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

and pretended not to see her, and rode past the 
house pretending to be anxiously looking for it, 
I committed two small fooleries which other 
young gentlemen in my circumstances might 
have committed because they came so very 
natural to me. But oh ! when I did find the 
house, and did dismount at the garden gate, and 
drag those stony-hearted boots across the lawn 
to Dora sitting on a garden seat under a lilac 
tree, what a spectacle she was. 
From Norwood through Denmark Hill we reach 
Dulwich associated with Pickwick on his retire- 
ment. 

The house I have taken," said Mr. Pickwick, 
" is at Dulwich. It has a large garden, and is 
situated in one of the most pleasant spots near 
London. It has been fitted up with every* 
attention to substantial comfort ; perhaps to a 
little elegance besides ; but of that you shall 
judge for yourselves. Sam accompanies me 
there. 

At Dulwich Church Mr. Winkle was married to 
Emily, and in conclusion we read : 

Mr. Pickwick is somewhat infirm now ; but 
he retains all his former juvenility of spirit, and 
may still be frequently seen contemplating the 
pictures in the Dulwich Gallery, or enjoying a 
walk about the pleasant neighbourhood on a fine 
day. He is known by all the poor people about, 
who never fail to take their hats off as he passes, 
with great respect. The children idolise him, 
and so indeed does the whole neighbourhood. 



ITINERARY AND REFERENCES 
ROUTE EIGHT 



WESTMINSTER TO GREENWICH 



Dover Road 

Copperfield, 12 
Dorrit, I, 23 
Two Cities, 1,2 

Astley's (site of) 

Gunosity, 39 
Bleak House, 21 
Sketches : Astley's 
Miscell. P. : Booley 

Waterloo Station 

Mutual, IV, ii 

Lambeth 

Bleak House, 64 
Nickleby, 57, 59 

Marsh Gate 

Sketches : Streets 
Shops 

New Cut 

Sketches : Shops 

Streets 
Miscell. P. : Amusements 

Victoria Theatre 

Sketches : Streets 
Miscell. P. : Amusements 

Waterloo Road 

Uncommercial, 36 
Somebody's Luggage 

Bethlehem Hospital 

Barnaby, 67 
Uncommercial, 13 

Walcot Square 
Bleak House, 64 



St. George's Circus, late Fields 

(The Obelisk) 
Life 

Copperfield, 12 
Barnaby, 48 
Pickwick, 43 
Uncommercial, 10 
Sketches : ist May 
Somebody's Luggage 

Surrey Theatre 

Life 
Dorrit, I, 7 

Elephant and Castle 

Bleak House, 27 

New Kent Road 

Copperfield, 13 

Old Kent Road 

Life 

Copperfield, 13 
Mutual, II, i 
Uncommercial, 7, 13 
Dr. Mangold 

Deptford 

Bleak House, 20 
Dombey, 4 
Uncommercial 6 
Going into Society 

Greenwich 

Life 

Mutual II, 8 ; IV, 4 

Expectations, 45 

Copperfield, 44 

Poor Travellers 

Sketches : Greenwich 

Sunday 



145 



146 



THE LONDON OF DICKENS 



Blackheath 

Copperfield, 5, 13, 19 
Mutual, IV, 4 
Poor Travellers 
Uncommercial, 7 

Shooter's Hill 

Pickwick, 57 
Two Cities, I, 2 
Holly Tree 
Sunday 
Uncommercial, 7 

Severndroog Castle 

Sunday 

Peckham 

Curiosity, 56 
Dombey, 4, 14 
Haunted Man 
Uncommercial, 6, 35 

Camberwell 

Sketches : Sparkins 
Pickwick, i, 20, 22 
Expectations, 15, 55 
Chuzzlewit, 9 
Nickleby, 37 
Dorrit, I, 8 

Walworth 

Expectations, 24, 25 
Uncommercial, 6 
Sketches : Tales 6 
Life 

Kennington 

Lirriper 



Bleak House, 39 
Miscell. P. : Extra. Story 

Brixton 

Chuzzlewit, 27 
Pickwick, i 
Uncommercial, 6 
Sketches : Tales 5 

Clapham 
Pickwick, i 

Clapham Road 

Poor Relation 

Clapham Rise 

Sketches : Joseph Porter 
Haunted House 

Clapham Common 

Pickwick, 35 

Tooting 

Bleak House, 10 
Miscell. P. : Paradise at 

Norwood 

Dombey, 33 
Copperfield, 26, 33 
Uncommercial 14 
Life 

Beulah Spa (site of) 

Sketches : Tottle 

Seven Dials 

Dulwich 

Pickwick, 57 



ROUTE NINE 

ROUND THE SQUARES. I 

(DOUGHTY STREET TO OXFORD CIRCUS) 

THE squares of London had not quite the same 
fascination for Dickens as the ordinary streets 
possessed ; the people who dwelt in them were for 
the most part not those who interested him, although, 
when he came to deal with the meaner square of the 
type of Golden Square or Soho Square, we find him 
quite in his usual element. 

Between Holborn and Hyde Park, to the north 
and south of Oxford Street, are two lines of squares, 
and it is the purpose of this and the next ramble to 
traverse the streets leading to them. 

Making Dickens's house in Doughty Street our 
starting point once again, we are reminded that the 
correct postal address included the mention of 
Mecklenburg Square, though Dickens himself seldom 
used it. We turn right from the house and left 
into Guilford Street, past the Foundling Hospital 
(see Route Five) on the right, and then skirt Queen 
Square on the left. It was Richard Carstone in 
Bleak House who had " a neat little furnished lodging 
in a quiet old house near Queen Square." 

A little further on we reach Russell Square, across 
which young Dickens used to walk from Somers 
Town in the morning on the way to the Blacking 
Warehouse " with some cold hotch-potch in a small 
basin tied up in a handkerchief." Russell Square is 
also referred to twice in Nicholas Nickleby. 

14? 



148 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

Turning to the left along Southampton Row, and 
to the right where it joins Theobald's Road, we reach 
Bloomsbury Square, which figures largely in Barnaby 
Rudge in the account of the sacking of Lord Mans- 
field's house on the site of No. 29, and finally as 
the scene of the execution of several of the rioters, 
including Barnaby himself, who was happily rescued 
at the eleventh hour. In Master Humphrey's Clock 
we hear of the recommendation of "a charming 
fellow who had performed the feat six times of 
carrying away every bell-handle in Bloomsbury 
Square." 

On the far side of the Square is Great Russell 
Street and by turning to the left and passing the 
front of the British Museum, and then to the right 
along Bloomsbury Street we reach Bedford Square, 
mentioned in two delightful stories in the Sketches 
(Horatio Sparkins and The Bloomsbury Christening) 
a once aristocratic neighbourhood, for Mr. Kitterbell 
who lived at No. 14 Great Russell Street delighted to 
have Bedford Square added to his address : his Uncle 
Dumps however, would insist in his replies address- 
ing " in lieu thereof the dreadful words, Tottenham 
Court Road." 

Montague Place is to the right ; here Mr. Perker 
lived and here came Lowten with the news of the 
arrest of Mrs. Bardell for the costs which Mr. Pick- 
wick would not pay. 

Summoning the cab of most promising appear- 
ance, he directed the driver to repair to Montague 
Place, Russell Square. 

Mr. Perker had had a dinner-party that day, 
as was testified by the appearance of lights in the 
drawing-room windows, the sound of an improved 
grand piano, and an improvable cabinet voice 
issuing therefrom, and a rather overpowering 
smell of meat which pervaded the steps and 
entry. 



ROUND THE SQUARES I 149 

Turning to the left along the north side of Bedford 
Square we reach the Tottenham Court Road, where 
at the cheap linen drapers, Messrs. Jones, Spruggins 
& Smith, the true identity of Horatio Sparkins was 
revealed. Turning to the right we remember that 
it was at the broker's shop " up at the top of Totten- 
ham Court Road " that " the little round table with 
the marble top " and " the precious flower-pot/ 1 be- 
longing to Traddles and seized by the broker when 
the Micawber household in Camden Town was sold 
up, were recovered by the aid of Clara Peggotty. 
In Nicholas Nickleby we are introduced to 
Miss Knag's brother, who was an ornamental 
stationer and small circulating library keeper, 
in a by-street off Tottenham Court Road ; and 
who let out by the day, week, month or year 
the newest old novels, whereof the titles were 
displayed in pen-and-ink characters on a sheet 
of pasteboard, swinging at his door-post. 
Dickens himself used to come this way as a boy 
from his home in Gower Street, to the blacking 
factory at Charing Cross. (Route Thirteen.) 

In going to Hungerford Stairs of a morning, I 
could not resist the stale pastry put out at half- 
price on trays at the confectioners' doors in 
Tottenham Court Road ; and I often spent in 
that the money I should have kept for my 
dinner. Then I went without my dinner, or 
bought a roll, or a slice of pudding. 
Grafton Street on the left leads into Fitzroy 
Square, whereof in Nicholas Nickleby we are informed 
of its " dowager barrenness and frigidity." 

In Fitzroy Street Dickens lodged as a youth in 
1830. 

Keeping straight on, with the Square to the right, 
we reach Cleveland Street, formerly Norfolk Street. 
Here Dickens lived in 1816. The house is said to 
be No. 10. Forster writes in his Life of Dickens : 



150 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

When his father was again brought up by his 
duties to London from Portsmouth, they went 
into lodgings in Norfolk-street, Middlesex 
Hospital ; and it lived also in the child's memory 
that they had come away from Portsea in the 
snow. 

In Norfolk Street we again find him lodging as a 
young man in 1831, probably in the same house as 
that in which as a baby boy he made his first 
acquaintance with London. 

Cleveland Street was formerly Green Lanes, where 
the rioters in Barnaby Rudge had a meeting place. 
Turning to the right on reaching Cleveland Street, 
we soon arrive in Euston Road. Almost opposite, 
a little to the left, is Osnaburgh Terrace, where, at 
No. 9, Dickens lived temporarily in 1844. 

Continuing along the Marylebone Road, with 
Regent's Park to the right, we reach High Street on 
the left. Here at the corner is No. i Devonshire 
Terrace, where Dickens lived from 1839 to 1851. 
The house has been considerably altered since that 
time. It saw the output of many of the most 
important novels, The Old Curiosity Shop, Barnaby 
Rudge, Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son, and David 
Copperfield ; also three of the famous Christmas 
Books. 

A little beyond Devonshire Terrace, on the same 
side is Marylebone Church which may possibly have 
witnessed the christening of little Paul Dombey, and 
the second marriage of Mr. Dombey, but no direct 
reference is made to it in the novel. 

Continuing, the Marylebone Road ends in the 
Edgware Road, and we turn left to Hyde Park. 
It was in this region that Nicholas, accompanied by 
Newman Noggs, came to see his lady love but only 
found " Bobster " ! " They traversed the streets 
in profound silence ; and, after walking at a round 
pace for some distance, arrived in one of a gloomy 



ROUND THE SQUARES I 151 

appearance and very little frequented, near the 
Edgeware Road/' 

At the end of Edgware Road we come to Hyde 
Park and Marble Arch, with Oxford Street to the left 
and Bayswater Road on the right. On the railings 
of Hyde Park, opposite Edgware Road, is a tablet 
to show where Tyburn once stood. In A Tale of 
Two Cities we read : 

They hanged at Tyburn in those days, so the 

streets outside Newgate had not obtained the 

infamous notoriety that has since attached to it. 

From the Edgware Road we turn right, and in 

the second block on the right facing the Park is 

5 Hyde Park Place, the last London home of Dickens. 

This he rented in January, 1870, for his readings. 

" We live here " opposite the Marble Arch 

he wrote to J. T. Fields, " in a charming house, until 

the ist of June, and then return to Gad's. ... I 

have a large room here, with three fine windows 

overlooking the Park/' 

Other houses in the neighbourhood in which 
Dickens lived for a time were 16 Somers Place, 
Hyde Park, in 1865, 6 South wick Place, Hyde Park 
Square, in 1866. 

It may have been the house in Hyde Park Place 
that Dickens had in view when he caused Mr. 
Micawber to have aspirations for greatness in that 
direction. 

He mentioned a terrace at the western end 
of Oxford Street, fronting Hyde Park, on which 
he had always had his eye, but which he did not 
expect to attain immediately, as it would require 
a large establishment. There would probably 
be an interval, he explained, in which he should 
content himself with the upper part of a house, 
over some respectable place of business say in 
Piccadilly which would be a cheerful situation 
for Mrs. Micawber. 



152 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

When Magwitch announced himself to Pip as his 
benefactor : 

He considered the chamber and his own lodg- 
ing as temporary residences, and advised me to 
look out at once for a " fashionable crib " near 
Hyde Park, in which he could have " a shake- 
down." 

Rose Maylie was staying at " a family hotel in a 
quiet but handsome street near Hyde Park " when 
Nancy visited her and informed her of Oliver and 
Monks. 

Returning to Marble Arch we have, on the right, 
Park Lane (see Route Ten) and straight ahead is 
Oxford Street. In the search for Miss Wade, Mr. 
Meagles and Arthur Clennam " rode to the top of 
Oxford Street and, there alighting, dived in among 
the great streets of melancholy stateliness." 

Our direction lies on the opposite side of Oxford 
Street to Park Lane, among the squares of Maryle- 
bone. Opposite Marble Arch is Great Cumberland 
Place, which leads us across Upper Berkeley Street 
into Upper George Street. Opposite is Bryanston 
Square. We turn to the right along Upper George 
Street. We now traverse the district between 
Bryanston Square and Portland Place, in which 
Mr. Dombey's house was situated. 

Mr. Dombey's house was a large one, on the 
shady side of a tall, dark, dreadfully genteel 
street in the region between Portland Place and 
Bryanston Square. It was a corner house, 
with great wide areas containing cellars frowned 
upon by barred windows, and leered at by 
crooked-eyed doors leading to dust-bins. It was 
a house 01 dismal state, with a circular back to it, 
containing a whole suit of drawing-rooms looking 
upon a gravelled yard, where two gaunt trees, 
with blackened trunks and branches, rattled 
rather than rustled, their leaves were so smoke- 
dried. 



ROUND THE SQUARES I 153 

The next square which we pass on the left is 
Montague Square. " Mr. Jorkins . . . lived by him- 
self in a house near Montague Square, which was 
fearfully in want of painting/' 

The next turning on the right is Gloucester Place ; 
here we turn right and arrive in Portman Square. 

The Podsnaps lived in a shady angle adjoining 
Portman Square. They were a kind of people 
certain to dwell in the shade, wherever they 
dwelt. 

Turning to the left along the top of the square 
we reach Baker Street, crossing which into Lower 
Berkeley Street we are in Manchester Square, and 
by crossing same and continuing straight on along 
Hinde Street reach Bentinck Street. At No. 18 
(now rebuilt) the Dickens family lived in 1833. 
Bentinck Street leads into Welbeck Street, whither 
rode Lord George Gordon " along the Strand, up 
Swallow Street into the Oxford Road, and thence 
to his house in Welbeck Street, near Cavendish 
Square, whither he was attended by a few dozen 
idlers." Lord George Gordon's house was No. 64 
close to Wigmore Street (since rebuilt). 

Turning right along Welbeck Street and then left 
into Wigmore Street we soon reach Harley Street, 
where at " the handsomest house " the Merdles 
lived. 

Upon that establishment of state, the Merdle 
establishment in Harley Street, Cavendish Square, 
there was the shadow of no more common wall 
than the fronts of other establishments of state 
on the opposite side of the street. Like un- 
exceptionable Society, the opposing rows of 
houses in Harley Street were very grim with one 
another. Indeed, the mansions and their in- 
habitants were so much alike in that respect 
that the people were often to be found drawn up 
on opposite sides of dinner-tables, in the shade 



154 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

of their own loftiness, staring at the other side 
of the way with the dullness of the houses. 
At the junction of Harley Street with Wigmore 
Street is Cavendish Square. 

"The lady's name," said Ralph, "is Mantalini, 
Madame Mantalini. I know her. She lives near 
Cavendish Square. If your daughter is disposed 
to try after the situation, I'll take her there, 
directly/' . . . They arrived without any further 
conversation at the dressmaker's door, which 
displayed a very large plate, with Madame 
MantsJini's name and occupation, and was 
approached by a handsome flight of steps. 
There was a shop to the house, but it was let 
off to an importer of otto of roses. Madame 
Mantalini's show-rooms were on the first floor ; 
a fact which was notified to the nobility and 
gentry by the casual exhibition, near the hand- 
somely curtained windows, of two or three 
elegant bonnets of the newest fashion, and some 
costly garments in the most approved taste. 
Near here was the Boffin mansion outside which 
the evil genius Silas Wegg presided : 

Over against a London house, a corner house 
not far from Cavendish Square, a man with a 
wooden leg had sat for some years, with his 
remaining foot in a basket in cold weather. 
Cavendish Place leads into Regent Street, where 
to the left we see All Souls' Church, referred to in the 
description of Sam Weller's valentine. " A repre- 
sentation of the spire of the church in Langham Place, 
London, appeared in the distance." 

Turning to the right we reach Oxford Circus ; 
Oxford Street runs right to Marble Arch and left 
to Tottenham Court Road. 

It was in the neighbourhood of Oxford Street 
that Nicholas Nickleby first saw Madeleine Bray at 
the General Agency Office, and here later on he made 



ROUND THE SQUARES I 155 

his first acquaintance with Mr. Charles Cheeryble, 
who " dragged him back into Oxford Street, and, 
hailing an omnibus on its way to the City, pushed 
Nicholas in before him, and followed himself." 

Esther Summerson and her guardian had lodgings 
near Oxford Street. 

We took up our abode at a cheerful lodging 

near Oxford Street, over an upholsterer's shop. 

London was a great wonder to us, and we were 

out for hours and hours at a time, seeing the 

sights, which appeared to be less capable of 

exhaustion than we were. We made the round 

of the principal theatres, too, with great delight, 

and saw all the plays that were worth seeing. 

In dealing with a certain Government Department 

in Little Dorrit the statement of one of the Barnacle 

family is thus recorded : 

That the sheets of foolscap paper it had devoted 

to the public service would pave the footways on 

both sides of Oxford Street from end to end, and 

leave nearly a quarter of a mile to spare for the 

Park, while of tape red tape it had used enough 

to stretch in graceful festoons from Hyde Park 

Corner to the General Post Office. 

Close to Oxford Circus and near Great Portland 

Street is Oxford Market, where Towlinson, Dombey's 

butler, " had visions of leading an altered and 

blameless existence as a serious greengrocer in 

Oxford Market." 



ITINERARY AND REFERENCES 
ROUTE NINE 



DOUGHTY STREET TO OXFORD CIRCUS 



48 Doughty Street 

(See Route i) 

Russell Square 

Nickleby, 16, 37 
Pickwick, 47 
Sketches : Milliner 

Queen Square 

Bleak House, 18 

Bloomsbury Square 

Barnaby, 66, 77 
Clock, i 
Drood, 22 

Great Russell Street 

Sketches : Christening 
Uncommercial, 4 

Bedford Square 

Sketches : Sparkins, Christen- 
ing 

Montague Place 

Pickwick, 47 

Tottenham Court Road 

Sketches: Gm Shop 
Sparkins 
Last Cab 
Hackney C. 

Barnaby, 44 

Copperfield, 34 

Nickieby, 18 

Life 



Fitzroy Square 

Nickleby, 37 
Sketches : Hackney C. 



Cleveland Street (late Norfolk 
Street and Green Lanes) 

Dickens lodged here 1816 and 
1831 

Barnaby Rudge, 44 

9 Osnaburgh Terrace 

Dickens lived here temporarily 
1844 

Regent's Park 

Pickwick, 45 
Uncommercial, 36 

Regent's Canal 

Sketches : Tottle 
Uncommercial, 6 

1 Devonshire Terrace 

Dickens lived here 1839-51 

Marylebone Church 

Dombey, 30 

Queen Charlotte's Hospital 

Dombey, 2 

Edgware Road 

Nickleby, 40 

Tyburn (site of) 
Two Cities, II, 2 
Pickwick, 43 
Barnaby, Preface 

Hyde Park 

Nickleby, 32 
Twist, 39 
Copperfield, 28 
Mutual, I, ii 
Twist, 39 
Expectations, 41 
Dorrit, II, 8 



156 



ROUND THE SQUARES I 



157 



Kensington Gardens 

Sketches: Tottle 
Nickleby, 28 
Dombey, 14 

Kensington 

Pickwick, 35, 44 
Barnaby, 16 
Twist, 21 

5 Hyde Park Place 

Dickens lived here 1870 

Park Lane 

(See Route 10) 

Oxford Street 

(See below) 

Bryanston Square 

Dombey, 3 

Portland Place 

Dombey, 3 
Mutual, III, 1 6 

Montague Square 

Copperfield, 35 

Portman Square 

Mutual, I, ii 

Bentinck Street 

Dickens lodged here 1833 

-Welbeck Street 

Barnaby, 37, 53, 52 

Wimpole Street 

Uncommercial, 16 



Barley Street 

Dorrit, I, 20, 21 
Uncommercial, 16 

Cavendish Square 

Nickleby, 10 
Mutual, I, 5 ; IV, 12 
Dorrit, I, 20, 21 
Barnaby, 37 

Langham Place 

Pickwick, 33 

Regent Street 

(See Route 10) 

Great Portland Street 

Sketches . Steam Ex. 

Oxford Street 

Nickleby, 16, 35 

Bleak! House, 13 

Sketches : Early Coaches 
Tottle 
Omnibuses 

Dorrit, I, 27 ; II, 8 

Uncommercial, 10 

Copperfield, 28 

Barnaby, 37 

Two Cities, II, 6 

Oxford Market 

Dombey, 18 

6 Southwick Place 

Dickens lived here in 1866 

16 Somers Place 

Dickens lived here in 1 865 



160 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

windows of the Doctor's lodgings commanded a 
pleasant little vista of street that had a congenial 
air of retirement on it. There were few buildings 
then, north of the Oxford Road, and forest-trees 
flourished, and wild flowers grew, and the haw- 
thorn blossomed, in the now vanished fields. As 
a consequence, country airs circulated in Soho 
with vigorous freedom, instead of languishing 
into the parish like stray paupers without a 
settlement ; and there was many a good south 
wall, not far off, on which the peaches ripened 
in their season. . . . 

It was a cool spot, staid but cheerful, a wonder- 
ful place for echoes, and a very harbour from the 
raging streets. 

There ought to have been a tranquil barque in 
such an anchorage, and there was. 

The Doctor occupied two floors of a large, still 
house, where several callings purported to be 
pursued by day, but whereof little was audible 
any day, and which was shunned by all of them 
at night. In a building at the back, attainable 
by a court-yard where a plane tree rustled its 
green leaves, church-organs claimed to be made, 
and silver to be chased, and likewise gold to be 
beaten by some mysterious giant who had a 
golden arm starting out of the wall of the front 
hall as if he had beaten himself precious, and 
menaced .a similar conversion of all visitors. 
Around these silent streets we can picture in our 
fancy Sidney Carton wandering at night-time. 

And yet he did care something for the streets 
that environed that house, and for the senseless 
stones that made their pavements. Many a 
night he vaguely and unhappily wandered there, 
when wine had brought no transitory gladness to 
him ; many a dreary daybreak revealed his 
solitary figure lingering there, and still lingering 



ROUND THE SQUARES II 161 

there when the first beams of the sun brought 
into strong relief removed beauties of architec- 
ture in spires of churches and lofty buildings, 
as perhaps the quiet time brought some sense of 
better things, else forgotten and unattainable, 
into his mind. 

Dean Street takes us into Oxford Street (Route 
Nine). Crossing that thoroughfare we find, almost 
opposite, Newman Street, where at No. 26 is the house 
of Mr. Turveydrop. 

Bending our steps towards Newman Street 
... I found the Academy established in a 
sufficiently dingy house at the corner of an 
archway, with busts in all the staircase windows 
In the same house there were also established 
as I gathered from the plates on the door, a 
drawing-master, a coal-merchant (there was 
certainly, no room for his coals), and a litho- 
graphic artist. On the plate which, in size and 
situation, took precedence of all the rest, I read 
MR. TURVEYDROP. . . . Mr. Turveydrop's great 
room . . . was built out into a mews at the back, 
was lighted by a skylight. It was a bare re- 
sounding room smelling of stables. 
Returning to Oxford Street we turn to the right 
and take the second on the left, Poland Street. 
On the right is Great Marlborough Street ; the 
famous police court here is the one to which In- 
spector Bucket conducted Esther before commencing 
his search for Lady Dedlock. 

In the Steam Excursion (Sketches by Boz) we 
learn that " Mrs. Taunton's domicile [is] in Great 
Marlborough Street." 

The other end of this street leads into Regent 

Street where we turn to the left. In Regent Street, 

in " a handsome suite of private apartments " lived 

Lord Frederick Verisopht, in Nicholas Nickleby. 

We now turn left into Beak Street, and then right 

L 



162 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

into Warwick Street, where at No. 12 is a Roman 
Catholic church, no doubt the one in "Warwick 
Street, Golden Square " referred to in Barnaby 
Rudge. " The men who are loitering in the streets 
to-night are half-disposed to pull down a Romish 
Chapel or two . . . they only want leaders/' Later 
in the same book Sim Tappertit denies to the Vardens 
that he was " at Warwick Street " but he proudly 
asserts that " he was at Westminster " ! 

Returning to Beak Street, we keep to the right to 
the corner of Upper James Street, where the Crown 
public-house is a successor of the one mentioned by 
Newman Noggs in Nicholas Nickleby, Beak Street 
having been formerly called Silver Street. 

If ever you want a shelter in London (don't 
be angry at this, / once thought I never should) 
they know where I live, at the sign of the 
Crown, in Silver Street, Golden Square. It is at 
the corner of Silver Street and James Street, 
with a bar-door both ways. You can come at 
night. 

The home of the Kenwigs family where Noggs 
lodged, and Nickleby too, later on, was either in 
Silver Street, Carnaby Street, or in Broad Street ; 
at any rate, it was close at hand. The description 
given is as follows : 

In that quarter of London in which Golden 
Square is situated there is a bygone, faded, 
tumble-down street, with two irregular rows of 
tall meagre houses, which seem to have stared 
each other out of countenance years ago. The 
very chimneys appear to have grown dismal and 
melancholy from having had nothing better to 
look at than the chimneys over the way. Their 
tops are battered, and broken, and blackened 
with smoke ; and, here and there, some taller 
stack than the rest, inclining heavily to one side 
and toppling over the roof, seems to meditate 



ROUND THE SQUARES II 163 

taking revenge for half a century's neglect by 

crushing the inhabitants of the garrets beneath. 

It is quite easy to imagine that in a house in one 

of these streets David Copperfield, assisted by 

Martha, found Little Em'ly and restored her to her 

uncle. 

I stopped an empty coach that was coming by, 
and we got into it. When I asked her where the 
coachman was to drive, she answered " Any- 
where near Golden Square ! And quick ! " . . . 
We alighted at one of the entrances to the square 
she had mentioned, where I directed the coach to 
wait, not knowing but that we might have some 
occasion for it. She laid her hand on my arm, 
and hurried me on to one of the sombre streets, of 
which there are several in that part, where the 
houses were once fair dwellings in the occupation 
of single families, but have, and had, long 
degenerated into poor lodgings let off in rooms 
Entering at the open door of one of these, and 
releasing my arm, she beckoned me to follow 
her up the common staircase, which was like a 
tributary channel to the street. 
Upper James Street leads into Golden Square, 
where Ralph Nickleby had his office and dwelling- 
house. 

Ralph Nickleby . . . lived in a spacious house 
in Golden Square, which, in addition to a brass 
plate upon the street door, had another brass 
plate two sizes and a half smaller upon the left- 
hand door-post, surmounting a brass model of an 
infant's fist grasping a fragment of a skewer, and 
displaying the word " Office"; it was clear that 
Mr. Ralph Nickleby did, or pretended to do, 
business of some kind. 

No. 7, recently demolished, is pointed out as the 
most likely house. It was once the house of William 
a Beckett, with whom Dickens was acquainted. 



164 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

Of the square itself the following is an extract 
from the long and interesting description of it in 
Nicholas Nickleby : 

Although a few members of the graver pro- 
fessions live about Golden Square, it is not exactly 
in anybody's way to or from anywhere. It is 
one of the squares that have been ; a quarter of 
the town that has gone down in the world, and 
taken to letting lodgings. . . . Its boarding- 
houses are musical, and the notes of pianos and 
harps float in the evening time round the head 
of the mournful statue, the guardian genius of 
a little wilderness of shrubs, in the centre of the 
square. 

Crossing Golden Square by Lower James Street 
we turn to the right along Brewer Street which leads 
us past Warwick Street into Regent Street again. 
Opposite is Vigo Street ; a little to the left is Swallow 
Street. 

When Lord George Gordon rode to London from 
the " Maypole/' we read, he went " along the Strand, 
up Swallow Street, into the Oxford Road and thence 
to his house in Welbeck Street/' (See Route 
Nine.) 

We pass into Vigo Street. The first on the left 
is Sackville Street, which figures in Our Mutual 
Friend. 

Mr. and Mrs. Lammle's house in Sackville 

Street, Piccadilly, was but a temporary residence. 

It had done well enough, they informed their 

friends, for Mr. Lammle when a bachelor, but it 

would not do now. So they were always looking 

at palatial residences in the best situations, and 

always very nearly taking or buying one, but 

never quite concluding the bargain. 

A little further along, opposite Savile Row, is 

the Albany. It is also in Our Mutual Friend that 

we read, " He lived in chambers in the Albany, did 



ROUND THE SQUARES II 165 

Fledgeby, and maintained a spruce appearance/' 
Of the district between Savile Row, Burlington 
Gardens and Old Bond Street, Dickens wrote a 
charming paper entitled Arcadian London in the 
Uncommercial Traveller. It is too full of references 
to these streets to quote here ; suffice it to say he 
writes of the West End of London as it is in the 
autumn when most of the people are absent. 

Being in a humour for complete solitude and 
uninterrupted meditation this autumn, I have 
taken a lodging for six weeks in the most un- 
frequented part of England in a word, in 
London. 

The retreat into which I have withdrawn my- 
self is Bond Street. From this lonely spot I 
make pilgrimages into the surrounding wilder- 
ness, and traverse extensive tracts of the Great 
Desert. 

Proceeding to the right along Bond Street we are 
reminded that it was in " one of the thoroughfares 
which lie between Park Lane and Bond Street " 
that Nicholas Nickleby stopped at a handsome hotel 
for " a pint of wine and a biscuit/' and in the coffee- 
room heard the disparaging conversation between 
Sir Mulberry Hawk and Lord Frederick Verisopht 
concerning " little Kate Nickleby " which resulted 
in the fight between Nicholas and Mulberry Hawk. 
Long's Hotel in Bond Street, at which Cousin 
Feenix, in Dombey and Son, used to stay, was at No. 15 
New Bond Street. 

George Street, out of Conduit Street, leads us to 
what Dickens called " the aristocratic gravity of 
Hanover Square/' St. George's Church, which we 
pass, is the place for fashionable marriages, and 
thoughts of Sir Mulberry Hawk caused Mrs. Nickleby 
to think of Kate's marriage " with great splendour 
at St. George's, Hanover Square/' 

It was at the Hanover Square Rooms (on the site 



166 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

of No. 4) that Dickens and his friends gave several 
representations of Not So Bad as We Seem, and where 
he gave his public readings later on. 

In Tenterden Street is the Royal Academy of 
Music, which has a personal association with Dickens. 
As a boy of 12 he was living in Camden Town, parted 
from his parents who were in the Marshalsea Prison 
for debt. His sister Fanny was a student at the 
Academy, and he tells us : 

Sundays, Fanny and I passed in the prison. 
I was at the academy in Tenterden Street, 
Hanover Square, at nine o'clock in the morning, 
to fetch her ; and we walked back there together, 
at night. 

Brook Street at the south-west of the square, leads 
to Grosvenor Square. It was Mrs. Skewton, in 
Dombey and Son, who had "borrowed a house in Brook 
Street, Grosvenor Square, from a stately relative 
(Lord Feenix), who was out of town " and who did not 
mind letting her have the house for Edith's wedding 
to Mr. Dombey, " as the loan implied his final 
release and acquittance from all further loans and 
gifts to Mrs. Skewton and her daughter/' 

In an hotel in Brook Street Mr. Dorrit resided in 
the days of his affluence, and here the advent of the 
great Merdle to visit Mr. Dorrit caused great com- 
motion in the office. 

" The aristocratic gravity of Grosvenor Square," 
as it is called in Nicholas Nickleby, was exemplified 
in a later book, Little Dorrit, when it was made the 
place of residence of Mr. Tite Barnacle " or very 
near it," as Dickens adds to emphasize the differ- 
ence ; for the house was on the verge of " aristo- 
cratic gravity," being at No. 24 Mews Street, 
Grosvenor Square. 

A hideous little street of dead wall, stables and 
dunghills, with lofts over coach-houses inhabited 
by coachmen's families, who had a passion for 



ROUND THE SQUARES II 167 

drying clothes and decorating their window sills 
with miniature turnpike gates. 
The two or three airless houses at the entrance of 
Mews Street (one of which was occupied by the 
Barnacles) were let " at enormous rents on account 
of their being abject hangers-on to a fashionable 
situation/' 

When Arthur Clennam visited No. 24 he found it 
" a squeezed house, with a ramshackle bowed front, 
little dingy windows and a little dark area like a 
damp waistcoat pocket." 

Upper Brook Street leads out from Grosvenor 
Square into Park Lane, where we turn left to Hyde 
Park Corner. It was in this region to one of the 
streets at the back of Park Lane, between Grosvenor 
Square and Piccadilly that Mr. Meagles and Arthur 
Clennam came in search of Miss Wade and Tatty- 
coram. 

Mr. Meagles handed him a slip of paper, on 
which was written the name of one of the dull 
by-streets in the Grosvenor region, near Park 
Lane. . . . 

They rode to the top of Oxford Street, and, 
there alighting, dived in among the great streets 
of melancholy stateliness, and the little streets 
that try to be as stately and succeed in being 
more melancholy, of which there is a labyrinth 
near Park Lane. Wildernesses of corner-houses, 
with barbarous old porticoes and appurtenances ; 
horrors that came into existence under some 
wrong-headed person in some wrong-headed 
time, still demanding the blind admiration of all 
ensuing generations and determined to do so 
until they tumbled down, frowned upon the 
twilight. Parasite little tenements with the 
cramp in their whole frame, from the dwarf 
hall-door on the giant model of His Grace's in 
the Square to the squeezed window of the 



168 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

boudoir commanding the dunghills in the Mews, 
made the evening doleful. 

By turning to the left into Park Lane, Hyde Park 
Corner is reached. 

Bill Sikes and Oliver Twist are made to pass this 
way en route for Chertsey, and in Our Mutual 
Friend we read of Bradley Headstone walking to- 
wards Hyde Park Corner, meditating, with Rogue 
Riderhood walking at his side, muttering. 



ITINERARY AND REFERENCES 
ROUTE TEN 



LEICESTER SQUARE TO HYDE PARK CORNER 



Leicester Square (formerly Fields) 

Barnaby, 56 
Miscell. : Traveller 
Bleak House, 21, 24 

Leicester Place 

Life 

Gerrard Street 
Life 
Expectations, 26 

Soho 

Expectations, 26 
Nickleby, 64 
No Thoroughfare 
Two Cities, II, 6, 13 

Manette Street 

Soho Square 

No Thoroughfare 
Bleak House, 23 
Two Cities, II, 6, 13 
Miscell. P. : New Year 

Carlisle Street 

Barnaby, 5, 4 
Two Cities, II, 6, 13 

Newman Street 

Bleak House, 14, 23 
Sketches : Char., 9 

Berners Street 

Misceil. P. : Stopped Growing 
Sketches: Char., 9 

Great Maryborough Street 

Bleak House, 57 
Sketches : Steam Ex. 



Regent Street 

Sketches : Boarding, Bounce 
Uncommercial, 16 
Nickleby, 26, 10 

Quadrant 

Sketches : Dounce 

Clifford Street 

Uncommercial, 16 

Warwick Street 
Barnaby, 50, 51 

Beak Street (late Silver Street) 

Nickleby, 7 

Golden Square 

Nickleby, 2, 7, 14 
Barnaby, 50 
Copperfield, 50 

Swallow Street 

Barnaby, 37 

Sackville Street 
Mutual, I, 10 

Albany, The 

Mutual, II, 5 ; III, i ; IV, 8 
Uncommercial, 10 

Savile Row 

Uncommercial, 16, 10 

Burlington Gardens 

Uncommercial, 10, 16 

Burlington Street 
Uncommercial, 16 



169 



170 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

Burlington Arcade Dorrit, II, 16 

Uncommercial, 16 Uncommercial, 16 

Bond Street Grosvenor Square 

Nickleby, 32 Nickleby, 37 

Uncommercial, 16 Dorrit, I, 9, 10, 27 

Dombey, 31, 61 Dombey, 30 

Mutual, IV, 8 Nickleby, 36 

Sketches ; Tales, 5 Barnaby, 67 

. ^ * , , **. ^ Sketches : Scenes, 20 

Long's Hotel (site of) Twist I6 
Dombey, 31 

Read at Dusk Park Lane 

__ _ Dornt, I, 27 

Hanover Square Chuzzlewit, 13 

3?> " I Nickleby, 32 



Tenen Street "ffi5f i 

1-116 Twist, 21 

Brook Street Expectations, 30 

Dombey, 30 Dorrit, II, 8 



ROUTE ELEVEN 

PICCADILLY TO PARLIAMENT 

(HYDE PARK CORNER TO WESTMINSTER AND LAMBETH) 

THE western end of Piccadilly is at Hyde Park 
Corner. " The long rows of lamps in Piccadilly 
after dark are beautiful " said Henrietta in Some- 
body's Luggage i and the same remark holds good 
to-day. The pavement-artist in that story did 
not wish his loved one to go by Piccadilly, so shy 
was he of his work which was to be found on the 
" fine broad eligible piece of pavement " by the 
railings of the Green Park. 

Piccadilly was once chosen by Mr. Micawber in 
one of his flights of fancy as " a very suitable place 
of residence a cheerful situation for Mrs. Micawber " ! 

Near the corner of Dover Street on the left is 
the White Horse Cellar. The present building dates 
from 1884 only, but the old coaching inn of that 
name stood here before then, after it had been re- 
moved from the opposite side of the way, where it 
stood in Pickwick's day at the corner of Arlington 
Street on the site now occupied by the Ritz Hotel. 
Mr. Pickwick arrived too early at the White Horse 
Cellar and had to take shelter in the travellers' room 
which Dickens informs us is " the last resort of 
human dejection." 

The travellers' room at the White Horse Cellar 
is of course uncomfortable ; it would be no 
travellers' room if it were not. It is the right- 
hand parlour, into which an aspiring kitchen 
171 



172 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

fire-place appears to have walked, accompanied 
by a rebellious poker, tongs, and shovel. It is 
divided into boxes, for the solitary confinement 
of travellers, and is furnished with a clock, a 
looking-glass, and a live waiter : which latter 
article is kept in a small kennel for washing 
glasses, in a corner of the apartment. 
Here Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller took a coach 
for Bath, at which time Sam made the discovery 
that the coach was owned by a Moses Pickwick, 
which was a fact, Moses Pickwick being a well- 
known coach proprietor of Bath. 

When Esther Summerson arrived in London, the 
coach had the White Horse Cellar as its destination. 
Here she was met by Mr. Guppy," a young gentleman 
who had inked himself by accident," and conducted 
to Kenge & Carboy's in Lincoln's Inn. Later, 
Mr. Guppy in his declaration before Esther, said, 
" Cruel Miss, hear but another word. I think you 
must have seen that I was struck with those charms 
on the day when I waited at the Whytorseller. I 
think you must have remarked that I could not for- 
bear a tribute to those charms when I put up the 
steps of the 'ackney coach." 

Further along is Devonshire House, where Dickens 
acted before Queen Victoria in 1851 in Lytton's 
comedy " Not So Bad as We Seem " the prelude to 
some " splendid strolling " by Dickens and his 
friends for the noble cause of charity. 

Bond Street and the neighbourhood on our left 
is dealt with in Route Ten. 

The Piccadilly Hotel stands on the site of the 
St. James's Hall where Dickens gave his last read- 
ing in March, 1870. 

We cross Piccadilly here and turn back towards 
Hyde Park. At St. James's Church, Alfred Lammle 
was married to Sophronia, as so delightfully described 
in Our Mutual Friend. 



PICCADILLY TO PARLIAMENT 173 

A little further on, at No. 193, is the site of the 
publishing office once occupied by Chapman & Hall, 
which saw the issuing of all Dickens's books from 
1859. The next turning but one is St. James's 
Street ; some chambers at the corner here were the 
scene of one of the Two Ghost Stories ; ' at No. 50 
St. James's Street was the famous club Crockford's, 
mentioned in Nicholas Nickleby. 

Ryder Street on the left leads into Duke Street, 
the abode of Twemlow, in Our Mutual Friend. 

There was an innocent piece of dinner-furniture 

that went upon easy castors and was kept over a 

livery stable yard in Duke Street, Saint James's, 

when not in use, to whom the Veneerings were a 

source of blind confusion. The name of this 

article was Twemlow. Being first cousin to 

Lord Snigsworth, he was in frequent requisition, 

and at many houses might be said to represent 

the dining-table in its normal state. 

Near Pall Mall "in a first floor over a tailor's" 

were the West End offices of The Anglo-Bengalee 

Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance Company," 

and, in Pall Mall itself, Tigg Montague lived in a 

house the lower storey of which " was occupied 

by a wealthy tradesman, but Mr. Montague had 

all the upper portion, and a splendid lodging it was." 

In Chapter 28 of Martin Chuzzlewit there is an 

interesting account of how Mr. Bailey Junior drove 

Tigg Montague's cab, 

tempting boys, with friendly words, to get 
up behind, and immediately afterwards cutting 
them down ; and the like flashes of a cheerful 
humour, which he would occasionally relieve by 
going round St. James's Square at a hard gallop, 
and coming slowly into Pall Mall by another 
entry, as if, in the interval, his pace had been a 
perfect crawl. 

It was not until these amusements had been 



174 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

very often repeated, and the apple-stall at the 
corner had sustained so many miraculous escapes 
as to appear impregnable, that Mr. Bailey was 
summoned to the door of a certain house in Pall 
Mall, and, turning short, obeyed the call and 
jumped out. 

In Pall Mall, too, Chops the dwarf, when " going 
into Society/' had his lodgings, and "blazed aw T ay" 
the lottery fortune. 

At the corner of Waterloo Place is the Athenaeum 
Club, to which Dickens was elected in 1838. The 
lobby is memorable as the scene of the reconciliation 
between Dickens and Thackeray a few days before 
the latter's death. Meeting by accident after a 
period of strained relationship in the lobby, " the 
unrestrained impulse of both was to hold out the 
hand of forgiveness and fellowship/' 

Down the steps at Waterloo Place leads us to St. 
James's Park, where Mark Tapley arranged for an 
interview between young Martin Chuzzlewit and 
Mary Graham ; the Park was also the scene of a 
long conversation between Clennam, Meagles and 
Daniel Doyce, the latter having been lately met at 
the Circumlocution Office in Whitehall. 

In dealing with the ultimate fate of Sally Brass 
in The Old Curiosity Shop, Dickens says it was 
" darkly whispered that she had enlisted as a 
private . . . and had been seen in uniform, and on 
duty, to wit, leaning on her musket and looking out 
of a sentry box in St. James's Park/' 

Keeping to the left we leave the Park by the Horse 
Guards, viewing as we pass, like Mr. Dick and 
Peggotty, the soldiers there. In the conclusion of 
Barnaby Rudge we are told that Sim Tappertit, "on 
two wooden legs, shorn of his graceful limbs," was 
by the locksmith's aid " established in business as a 
shoeblack and opened a shop under an archway near 
the Horse Guards/' 



PICCADILLY TO PARLIAMENT 175 

We now turn right along Whitehall, passing on 
the left the old Palace of Whitehall itself, which 
caused Mr. Jingle to remark, " Looking at Whitehall, 
sir fine place little window somebody else's head 
off there eh, sir?" referring of course to the execu- 
tion of King Charles. 

At Whitehall, John Rokesmith read the placard 
posted there as to himself having been " found dead 
and mutilated in the river under circumstances of 
strong suspicion/' Whitehall is so full of Govern- 
ment Offices that we may take any one of them as 
being the Circumlocution Office to which Arthur 
Clennam went so often to interview the various 
members of the Tite Barnacle family. 

The Circumlocution Office was (as everybody 
knows without being told) the most important 
Department under Government. No public busi- 
ness of any kind could possibly be done at any 
time without the acquiescence of the Circum- 
locution Office. Its finger was in the largest 
public pie and in the smallest public tart. . . . 
Whatever was required to be done, the Circum- 
locution Office was beforehand with all the public 
departments in the art of perceiving HOW NOT 
TO DO IT. 

Scotland Yard on the left is altogether changed 
from the time when Dickens described it in Sketches 
by Boz. 

Scotland Yard is a small a very small tract 
of land, bounded on one side by the River Thames, 
on the other by the gardens of Northumberland 
House : * abutting at one end on the bottom of 
Northumberland Street, at the other on the back 
of Whitehall Place. When this territory was 
first accidentally discovered by a country gentle- 
man who lost his way in the Strand, some years 
ago, the original settlers were found to be a tailor, 
a publican, two eating-house keepers, and a 



176 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

fruit-pie maker ; and it was also found to con- 
tain a race of strong and bulky men, who repaired 
to the wharfs in Scotland Yard regularly every 
morning, about five or six o'clock, to fill heavy 
waggons with coal, with which they proceeded to 
distant places up the country, and supplied the 
inhabitants with fuel. When they had emptied 
their waggons, they again returned for a fresh 
supply ; and this trade was continued through- 
out the year. 

At the corner of Derby Street is the Red Lion 
rebuilt in 1899 associated with Dickens as a boy. 
He tells us how one evening in walking to the 
Borough via Westminster Bridge he " went into a 
public-house in Parliament Street, which is still 
there, though altered, at the corner of the short 
street leading to Cannon Row and ordered a glass 
of ale, " the very best . . . with a good head to it." 
They asked me a good many questions, as to 
what my name was, how old I was, where I 
lived, how I was employed, etc., etc. To all of 
which, that I might commit nobody, I invented 
appropriate answers. They served me with the 
ale, though I suspect it was not the strongest 
on the premises ; and the landlord's wife . . . 
bending down, gave me a kiss. 
This story has its counterpart in David Copper field, 
when he asked for the glass of the " Genuine Stun- 
ning." 

At the end of Parliament Street we reach the 
Houses of Parliament, to the right of which is 
Westminster Hall. 

In the preface to the Pickwick Papers, Dickens 
tells us how, when his first literary effusion " ap- 
peared in all the glory of print "... 

I walked down to Westminster Hall and turned 
into it for half an hour because my eyes were so 
dimmed with joy and pride that they could not 



PICCADILLY TO PARLIAMENT 177 

bear the street and were not fit to be seen 
there. 

It was here that a dramatic scene in Barnaby 
Rudge was enacted, when Mr. Haredale, after an 
angry meeting there with Sir John Chester and 
Gashford, chided Lord George Gordon for " address- 
ing an ignorant and exciting throng ... in such 
injurious language/ 1 inciting them to riot and 
rebellion. Later, Lord George Gordon was tried 
here for high treason and found not guilty ; but 
his fate was to die in a Newgate cell some years later 
at the early age of forty-three. 

In a building to the north of the old Hall the 
Law Courts were held until 1883, when the new 
buildings in Fleet Street were opened (Route 
Thirteen), and here the final scenes of the cause 
celebre Jarndyce v. Jarndyce were enacted. The 
opening scenes in Bleak House dealing with this 
case were, of course, at Lincoln's Inn Hall (Route 
One) , where the Lord Chancellor sat out of term time. 
In the same book we read that during the long 
vacation, when " the public offices lie in a hot 
sleep, Westminster Hall itself is a shady solitude 
where nightingales might sing, and a tenderer class 
of suitors than is usually found there walk/' 

Behind Westminster Hall rise the Houses of 
Parliament but not the buildings of Barnaby Rudge 
time, where Lord George Gordon presented his 
famous No-Popery Petition. The present buildings 
were erected 1840-1857 after the old Parliament 
House was burnt down in 1834. Dickens entered 
the House as a reporter in 1831 and left it in 1836. 
Frequent references to the House of Commons and 
its Members are made in Dickens's books, particularly 
in the Miscellaneous Papers. 

Westminster Abbey enshrines the body of Charles 
Dickens, and we cannot do better than to quote here 
a part of the concluding portion of John Forster's 
Life of Dickens. M 



178 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

The Times took the lead in suggesting that the 
only fit resting-place for the remains of a man so 
dear to England was the Abbey in which the 
most illustrious Englishmen are laid. 

The public homage of a burial in the Abbey 
had to be reconciled with his own instructions 
to be privately buried without previous announce- 
ment of time or place, and without monument or 
memorial. He would himself have preferred to 
lie in the small graveyard under Rochester Castle 
wall, or in the little churches of Cobham or 
Shorne ; but all these were found to be closed ; 
and the desire of the Dean and Chapter of 
Rochester to lay him in their Cathedral had been 
entertained, when the Dean of Westminsters 
request, and the considerate kindness of his 
generous assurance that there should be only 
such ceremonial as would strictly obey all in- 
junctions of privacy, made it a grateful duty to 
accept that offer. The spot already had been 
chosen by the Dean ; and before midday on 
the following morning, Tuesday, the I4th of June, 
with knowledge of those only who took part in 
the burial, all was done. The solemnity had not 
lost by the simplicity. Nothing so grand or so 
touching could have accompanied it as the still- 
ness and the silence of the vast cathedral. Then, 
later in the day and all the following day, came 
unbidden mourners in such crowds that the 
Dean had to request permission to keep open the 
grave until Thursday ; but after it was closed 
they did not cease to come, and " all day long," 
Doctor Stanley wrote on the I7th, " there was a 
constant pressure to the spot, and many flowers 
were strewn upon it by unknown hands, many 
tears shed from unknown eyes/' He alluded to 
this in the impressive funeral discourse delivered 
byjiim in the Abbey on the morning of Sunday, 



PICCADILLY TO PARLIAMENT 179 

the igth, pointing to the fresh flowers that then 
had been newly thrown (as they still are thrown, 
in this fourth year after his death), and saying 
that " the spot would thenceforward be a sacred 
one with both the New World and the Old, as 
that of the representative of the literature, not 
of this island only, but of all who speak our 
English tongue." The stone placed upon it is 
inscribed : 

CHARLES DICKENS. 

BORN FEBRUARY THE SEVENTH, 1812. 
DIED JUNE THE NINTH, 1870. 

Facing the grave, on its left and right, are the 
monuments of CHAUCER, SHAKESPEARE, and 
DRYDEN, the three immortals who did most to 
create and settle the language to which CHARLES 
DICKENS has given another undying name. 
It is only natural that a great national monument 
like Westminster Abbey should find more than one 
mention in Dickens's works. A somewhat prophetic 
reference is made in Little Dorrit : 

Time shall show us. The post of honour and 
the post of shame ... a peer's statue in West- 
minster Abbey, and a seaman's hammock in 
the bosom of the deep . . . only Time shall show 
us whither each traveller is bound. 
In Our Mutual Friend we read that in reference 
to Miss Abbey Potterson who kept the Six Jolly 
Fellowship Porters at Limehouse : 

Some waterside heads . . . harboured mud- 
dled notions that, because of her dignity and 
firmness, she was named after, or in some way 
related to, the Abbey at Westminster. 
In Great Expectations, Pip and Herbert went to 
church at Westminster Abbey, and in the afternoon 
walked in the Parks, when Pip wondered who shod 
all the horses, and wished Joe did ! 



i8o THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

When David Copperfield and Peggotty followed 
Martha from Blackfriars to Millbank in the hope of 
getting news of Little Em'ly we read : 

We were now down in Westminster. We had 
turned back to follow her, having encountered 
her coming towards us ; and Westminster Abbey 
was the point at which she passed from the 
lights and noise of the leading streets. 
They passed Old Palace Yard but the Exchequer 
Coffee House there, at which Mr. Julius Handford 
was staying, according to the information he gave 
Mr. Inspector in Our Mutual Friend, was a myth 
like his own name for there is no trace of any such 
place. They continued along " the narrow water- 
side street by Millbank " ; Grosvenor Road is 
entirely different to-day from what it was then, 
and the Tate Gallery now occupies the site of the 
old Millbank Prison. 

There was, and is when I write, at the end of 
that low-lying street, a dilapidated little wooden 
building, probably an obsolete old ferry-house. 
Its position is just at that point where the street 
ceases and the road begins to lie between a row 
of houses and the river. As soon as she came 
here, and saw the water, sfye stopped as if she 
had come to her destination ; and presently 
went slowly along by the brink of the river, 
looking intently at it. 

. . . The neighbourhood was a dreary one at 
that time ; as oppressive, sad, and solitary by 
night as any about London. There were neither 
wharves nor houses on the melancholy waste of 
road near the great blank prison. A sluggish 
ditch deposited its mud at the prison walls. 
Co^ se grass and rank weeds straggled over all 
f marshy land in the vicinity. In one part, 
carcases of houses, inauspiciously begun and 
never finished, rotted away. 



PICCADILLY TO PARLIAMENT 181 

At Vauxhall, reached by crossing the bridge just 
beyond the Tate Gallery, Mr. Haredale took lodgings 
" in which to pass the day and rest himself ; and 
from this place, when the tide served, he usually 
came to London Bridge from Westminster by water, 
in order that he might avoid the busy streets/' 

Henrietta and the Pavement Artist, already 
referred to in the commencement of this Route, used 
to walk on Vauxhall Bridge (the old one not the 
present structure) and enjoy the cool breezes. On 
one occasion : 

After several slow turns, Henrietta gaped 
frequently (so inseparable from woman is the 
love of excitement), and said, " Let's go home by 
Grosvenor Place, Piccadilly, and Waterloo " 
localities, I may state for the information of the 
stranger and the foreigner, well known in London, 
and the last a bridge. 

Bradley Headstone after meeting Lizzie Hexam 
at the house of the Dolls' Dressmaker to which we 
refer later crossed Vauxhall Bridge for South 
London, he " giving her his hand at parting and 
she thanking him for his care of her brother." 

Vauxhall Station across the Bridge is opposite the 
site of Vauxhall Gardens ; one of the Sketches 
by Boz is an account of these Gardens by day " a 
thing hardly to be thought of ! " Vauxhall by day- 
light he likens to " a porter pot without porter, the 
House of Commons without the Speaker, a gas lamp 
without the gas " ! Yet what an amusing account 
Dickens makes of it ! 

Retracing our steps past the Tate Gallery and 
past Lambeth Bridge, we reach on the left at No. 48 
Millbank, Dean Stanley Street, formerly known as 
Church Street, Smith Square. Here the Dolls' 
Dressmaker lived with her drunken father, her 
" bad boy." 

Bradley Headstone and Charley Hexam duly 



182 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

got to the Surrey side of Westminster Bridge, 
and crossed the bridge, and made along the 
Middlesex shore towards Millbank. In this 
region are a certain little street, called Church 
Street, and a certain little blind square, called 
Smith Square, in the centre of which last retreat 
is a very hideous church, with four towers at the 
four corners, generally resembling some petrified 
monster, frightful and gigantic, on its back with 
its legs in the air. They found a tree near by 
in a corner, and a blacksmith's forge, and a 
timber yard, and a dealer's in old iron. 

After making the round of this place, and 

noting that there was a deadly kind of repose on 

it, more as though it had taken laudanum than 

fallen into a natural rest, they stopped at the 

point where the street and the square joined, and 

where there were some little quiet houses in a 

row. To these Charley Hexam finally led the 

way, and at one of these stopped. 

Of the " hideous church," Jenny Wren told her 

visitors, " There's doors under the church in the 

square black doors, leading into black vaults. 

Well, I'd open one of these doors and I'd cram 

'em all in, and then I'd lock the door, and through 

the keyhole I'd blow in pepper." 

Reaching Westminster Abbey once again, we turn 
to the right to cross Westminster Bridge. On the 
Embankment opposite is Westminster Station on the 
Underground, occupying the site of Manchester 
Buildings fully described in Nicholas Nickleby where 
Mr. Gregsbury, M.P., lived, to whom Nicholas applied 
for a situation. 

The present Westminster Bridge was built in 
1862. It replaced the older bridge which had existed 
for over a century, from which Barnaby and his 
mother saw the first rising of the Gordon Riots 
as " they sat down in one of the recesses of the 
bridge .to rest " 



PICCADILLY TO PARLIAMENT 183 

Here Barnaby was spoken to by Lord George 
Gordon and enlisted in the cause, passing over the 
bridge, along the Bridge Road and so to St. George's 
Fields. (Route Eight.) 

Later, when Barnaby and Hugh were rowing down 
the river under the bridge : 

They plainly heard the people cheering ; and, 
supposing they might have forced the soldiers 
to retreat, lay upon their oars for a few minutes, 
uncertain whether to return or not. But the 
crowd passing along Westminster Bridge soon 
assured them that the populace were dispersing. 



ITINERARY AND REFERENCES 
ROUTE ELEVEN 

HYDE PARK CORNER TO WESTMINSTER 



Grosvenor Place 

Somebody's Luggage 
Nickleby, 21 

Buckingham Palace 

Life 

Somebody's Luggage 

Green Park 

Somebody's Luggage 

Serpentine 

Sketches : Dancing 

Piccadilly 

Nickleby, 64 
Mutual, I, 10 
Dr. Marigold 
Copperneld, 28 
Barnaby, 67 
Somebody's Luggage 

White Horse Cellar (site) 
Bleak House, o 
Pickwick, 35 

Devonshire House 

Life 

St. James's Hall (site) 
Life 

St. James's Church 
Mutual, I, 10 

St. James's Streei 

Ghost Stones 
Hard Times, III, 3 

Crockford's (site at No. 50) 
Nickleby, 2 



Duke Street 

Mutual, I, 2 

King Street 

Bleak House, 56 

Almack's (Willis's Rooms) 

Bleak House, 56 

Pall Mall 

Going into Society 
Golden Mary 
Dombey, 58 
Mutual, II, 3 
Bleak House, 15 
Uncommercial, 16 
Mutual, III, 10 
Chuzzlewit, 27, 28 

St. James's Square 

Chuzzlewit, 27 
Mutual, I, 2 
Barnaby, 70 

Athenaeum Club 

Life 
Nickleby, 50 

Waterloo Place 

Sketches : Early Coaches 

Haymarket 

Bleak House, 14, 21 
Sketches : Scenes, 17 
Uncommercial, 10, 13 

Opera Colonnade (site of) 
Nickleby, 2 
Bleak House, 14 

Duke of York's Column 

Sketches: ist May 



184 



PICCADILLY TO PARLIAMENT 185 



St. James's Park 
Domt, I, 10 
Chuzzlewit, 14 
Sketches : Dancing 
Nickleby, 41 
Curiosity, 73 

Serpentine, The 

Sketches : Dancing 

Horse Guards 

Chuzzlewit, 14 
Copperfield, 35 
Rudge, 82 
Nickleby, 37, 41 

Whitehall 
Pickwick, 2 
Mutual, II, 13 
Reprinted, Patent 

Circumlocution Office 

Dornt, I, 10 
Uncommercial, 8 

Whitehall Place 

Sketches : Scotland Yard 

Scotland Yard 

Sketches : Scotland Yard 
Life 

Red Lion, Parliament Street 

Life 
Copperfield, II 

Parliament Street 

Barnaby, 44 

Westminster Hall 
Life 

Pickwick, Pref. 
Reprinted, Ghost Stories 
Barnaby, 43 
Mutual II, 4 
Bleak House, 65, 19 

Houses of Parliament 

Barnaby, 43, 49, 51 
Chuzzlewit, I 
Pickwick, 55 



Uncommercial, 13, 26 
Miscell. P. : various 

Westminster Abbey 

Copperfield, 35, 47 
Expectations, 22 
Uncommercial, 13 
Mutual, I, 6 
Dorrit, I, 15 
Life 

Palace Yard 

Barnaby, 43 
Mutual, I, 3 
Uncommercial, 13 
Sketches : Scenes, 18 

Millbank 

Barnaby, 82 
Sketches : Scenes, 17 
Copperfield, 46 
Mutual, II, i 

Vauxhall 

Barnaby, 41 

Vauxhall Bridge 

Luggage 
Mutual, II, i 
Sketches : Scenes, 10 

Vauxhall Gardens (site) 

Two Cities, II, 12 
Sketches: Vauxhall 

Church Street, Smith Square 

Mutual, II, i 

St. John's Church 
Mutual II, i 

Manchester Buildings (site) 
Nickleby, 16 
Sketches : Parliament 

Westminster Bridge 

Uncommercial, 13, 36 
Barnaby, 47, 48, 49 
Copperfield, 40 
Nickleby, 52 
Dorrit, II, 5 
Mutual, II, i 



ROUTE TWELVE 
WESTWARD 

(HYDE PARK CORNER TO TWICKENHAM) 

DICKENS'S London is not confined to any one 
particular quarter of the metropolis ; it is, however 
a pity that the Western outskirts have not the same 
interest attaching to them as the Eastern, Northern 
or Southern. His Uncommercial Traveller papers 
rarely dealt with the West beyond Bond Street, 
and there were no boyhood memories here such as 
drew him North and South. 

This route deals with all the remaining Western 
London links with Dickens. They are by no means 
unimportant although scattered, and most of them 
can easily be visited by a ride on one of the motor 
omnibuses going in the direction of the river at 
Richmond. 

One or two personal associations exist in the 
district ; Dickens lived in Selwood Terrace, Chelsea, 

Erior to his marriage, and was married at St. 
uke's Church, Chelsea. In later years he spent a 
few months at Twickenham and also at Petersham 
and wrote of this portion of the river in Little Dorrit. 
The western road through Hammersmith was 
known to Oliver Twist, to David Copperfield and to 
Arthur Clennam, all of whom came this way with 
varying purposes ; but the associations of the districts 
are, generally speaking, not so important as those in 
other parts of London. 

Our starting place is Hyde Park Corner, which is 
186 



WESTWARD 187 

dealt with in Route Ten. Our way lies down 
Grosvenor Place, then to the right along Halkin 
Street into what Dickens describes in Nicholas 
Nickleby as " the aristocratic pavements of Belgrave 
Square/' In an article in Reprinted Pieces, entitled 
Out of Town, Dickens tells how in Belgrave Square 
he met " the last man an ostler sitting on a post 
in a ragged red waistcoat, eating straw and mildewing 
away/' 

Lady Tippins, " that charmer," in Our Mutual 
Friend, 

dwells over a staymaker's in the Belgravian 
Borders, with a life-size model in the window on 
the ground floor of a distinguished beauty in 
a blue petticoat, stay-lace in hand, looking over 
her shoulder at the town in innocent surprise 
As well she may, to find herself dressing under 
the circumstances. 

Crossing the square and leaving it by West Halkin 
Street we arrive in Cadogan Place, where " Miss 
Nickleby and her mama went off in quest of Mrs. 
Wititterly, of Cadogan Place, Sloane Street." 

Cadogan Place is the one slight bond that joins 
two great extremes ; it is the connecting link 
between the aristocratic pavements of Belgrave 
Square and the barbarism of Chelsea. It is in 
Sloane Street, but not of it. The people in 
Cadogan Place look down upon Sloane Street, 
and think Brompton low. They affect fashion 
too, and wonder where the New Road is. Not 
that they claim to be on precisely the same 
footing as the high folks of Belgrave Square and 
Grosvenor Place, but that they stand, with refer- 
ence to them, rather in the light of those illegiti- 
mate children of the great who are content to 
boast of their connections, although their con- 
nections disavow them. Wearing as much as 
they can of the aks and semblances of loftiest 



188 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

rank, the people of Cadogan Place have the 
realities of middle station. 

Turning to the left along Cadogan Place and to 

the right at the bottom we reach Sloane Street, 

referred to above. Turning to the left we cross 

Sloane Square, pass down Lower Sloane Street and 

so into the Chelsea Bridge Road. Pimlico Road 

runs off to the left, and it was here, opposite the 

Barracks, that the Chelsea Bun House stood. In 

Barnaby Rudge we read that the Royal East London 

Volunteers, of which Gabriel Varden was a sergeant, 

having displayed their military prowess to the 

utmost in these warlike shows, they marched in 

glittering order to the Chelsea Bun House, and 

regaled in the adjacent taverns until dark. 

In Bleak House Mr. Bucket informs us of his 
intended visit to an aunt " that lives at Chelsea 
next door but two to the old original Bun House/' 
The Chelsea Bun House was demolished in 1839. 

Between the Barracks and Chelsea Hospital, now 
incorporated with the Hospital grounds, were 
Ranelagh Gardens. In A Tale of Two Cities " Mr. 
Stryver inaugurated the Long Vacation with a formal 
proposal to take Miss Manette to Vauxhall Gardens ; 
that failing, to Ranelagh." 

Passing along Chelsea Bridge Road with the 
Hospital on our right we soon reach the river at 
Chelsea Reach, to the right of Chelsea Bridge. 
We keep to the right along the Embankment. 

Quite a number of characters in Dickens lived at 
Chelsea. Mr. Vincent Crummies was actually born 
there, and consequently was " not a Prussian." 
Mr. Bayham Badger in Bleak House " had a good 
practice at Chelsea " ; Miss Sophia Wackles, beloved 
of Dick Swiveller, resided at Chelsea, and maintained 
there " a very small day-school for young ladies of 
proportionate dimensions." 

In Reprinted Pieces, Chelsea is mentioned more 



WESTWARD 189 

than once as the home of some of the characters, 
and in Our Mutual Friend Silas Wegg drops into 
poetry : 

Then farewell, my trim-built wherry. 

Oars and coat and badge farewell ! 
Nevermore at Chelsea Ferry 

Shall your Thomas take a spell. 
In Pickwick we find Sam Weller likening Job 
Trotter to a Chelsea Water Works. 

Just before reaching Albert Bridge, Flood Street 
turns to the right and leads us into King's Road, 
where we turn to the left and take the second on 
the right, Sydney Street, where on the right is 
situated St. Luke's Church, Chelsea ; here Charles 
Dickens married Catharine Hogarth on April 2nd, 
1836. 

By turning to the left at the end of Sydney 
Street we reach the Fulham Road. Here the 
fourth turning on the right is Selwood Terrace. 
At No. n, Dickens stayed for a time prior to his 
marriage, to be near the home of his future wife. 

We continue along the Fulham Road through 
Walham Green and so to the river again at Putney 
Bridge. This way came Arthur Clennam to visit Mr. 
Meagles who " had a cottage residence of his 
own " at Twickenham : 

He went by Fulham and Putney, for the plea- 
sure of strolling over the Heath. It was bright 
and shining there ; and, when he found himself 
so far on his road to Twickenham, he found him- 
self a long way on his road to a number of airier 
and less substantial destinations. They had 
risen before him fast in the healthful exercise 
and the pleasant road. It is not easy to walk 
along in the country without musing upon some- 
thing. 

In Dombey and Son we are introduced to 
Sir Barnet and Lady Skettles, very good 



igo THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

people, who resided in a pretty villa at Fulham, 
on the banks of the Thames ; which was one 
of the most desirable residences in the world when 
a rowing-match happened to be going past, but 
had its little inconveniences at other times, 
among which may be enumerated the occasional 
appearance of the river in the drawing-room, 
and the contemporaneous disappearance of the 
lawn and shubbery. 

Crossing the Bridge we are in Putney, where Dora 
went to live after the death of her father, and of 
which David Copperfield writes : 

How I found time to haunt Putney I am sure 
I don't know ; but I contrived, by some means or 
other, to prowl about the neighbourhood pretty 
often. 

When Traddles accompanied him to the house 
where Dora was living with her aunts, he tells us : 

On our approaching the house where the Misses 
Spenlow lived, I was at such a discount in respect 
of my personal looks and presence of mind that 
Traddles proposed a gentle stimulant in the form 
of a glass of ale. This having been administered 
at a neighbouring public-house, he conducted me, 
with tottering steps, to the Misses Spenlow's 
door. 

At Hammersmith lived the Pocket family, in 
Great Expectations : the family that Dickens des- 
cribes as " not growing up or being brought up, but 
tumbling up/' 

Whether or not Hammersmith was noted for 
schools in Dickens's day, we do not know, but his 
view of life encountered many there. Mrs. Nickleby 
tells Kate how " your dear papa's cousin's sister-in- 
law, a Miss Browndock, was taken into partnership 
by a lady that kept a school at Hammersmith and 
made her fortune in no time at all." 

Clara Barley, in Great Expectations, was met by 



WESTWARD 191 

Herbert Pocket " when she was completing her 
education at an establishment at Hammersmith ; 
in Miscellaneous Papers (Gone to the Dogs), we read 
of a " Miss Maggigg's boarding establishment at 
Hammersmith/' and in Sketches by Boz, under the 
title Sentiment, is a long account of Minerva House, 
Hammersmith, a " finishing establishment for young 
ladies, where some twenty girls of the ages of from 
thirteen to nineteen acquired a smattering of every- 
thing and a knowledge of nothing/' 

At Turnham Green we are told in A Tale of Two 
Cities the Lord Mayor of London had been made to 
" stand and deliver ... by one highwayman who 
despoiled the illustrious creature in sight of all his 
retinue/' 

Through Chiswick came Oliver Twist and Bill 
Sikes on the way to the burglary at Chertsey. 
" Kensington, Hammersmith, Chiswick, Kew Bridge 
and Brentford were all passed/' we are told, " and 
yet they went on as steadily as if they had only 
just begun their journey." 

Crossing Kew Bridge we reach Kew, and so to 
Richmond. The river makes a big sweep here to 
our right, through Brentford. In Great Expectations 
we read that " Arthur lived at the top of Compey- 
son's house (over nigh Brentford it was), and Compey- 
son kept a careful account agin him for board and 
lodging." 

Also, in Our Mutual Friend, we are told that 
The abode of Mrs. Betty Higden was not easy 
to find, lying in such complicated back settle- 
ments of muddy Brentford that they left their 
equipage at the sign of the Three Magpies and 
went in search of it on foot. 

The Three Magpies is identified with the Three 
Pigeons at Brentford. 

We follow the road to Richmond, with Kew 
Gardens, and later Richmond Park, on our right, 



192 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

and eventually join the river again at Richmond 
Bridge. Richmond is a place of Pickwickian 
association, for in the concluding chapter of the 
book we read : 

Mr. Tupman, when his friends married, and 
Mr. Pickwick settled, took lodgings at Rich- 
mond, where he has ever since resided. He 
walks constantly on the Terrace during the 
summer months, with a youthful and jaunty air 
which has rendered him the admiration of the 
numerous elderly ladies of single condition who 
reside in the vicinity. 

In Great Expectations we are again introduced to 
this Royal Borough. 

"I'm going to Richmond/' Estella told me. 
" Our lesson is that there are two Richmonds, 
one in Surrey and one in Yorkshire, and that 
mine is the Surrey Richmond. The distance is 
ten miles. ... I am going to live at a great 
expense with a lady there who has the power 
or says she has of taking me about, and intro- 
ducing me." . . . 

We came to Richmond all too soon and our 
destination there was a house by the Green ; 
a staid old house, where hoops and powder and 
patches . . . had had their court days many a 
time. Some ancient trees before the house were 
still cut into fashions as formal and unnatural as 
the hoops and wigs and stiff skirts. 
Instead of crossing the River by the Bridge we 
keep up Hill Rise for Richmond Hill ; the famous 
Terrace is on our right. At the top is a hospital on 
the site of the Star & Garter, the famous hotel where 
Dickens celebrated the completion of David Copper- 
field. Thackeray and Tennyson were of the party. 
Continuing forward we arrive at Petersham. At 
Elm Cottage (now called Elm Lodge), Petersham, 
Dickens lived during the summer of 1839. In a 



WESTWARD 193 

letter written at Petersham at the time he referred 
to this place as 

those remote and distant parts, with the chain 
of mountain formed by Richmond Hill presenting 
an almost insurmountable barrier between me 
and the busy world. 

He had previously stayed at Petersham for a time 
in 1836 whilst writing the Village Coquettes, as shown 
by a letter to the composer, John Hullah, from 
Petersham, suggesting that Hullah should pay him 
a visit there. 

River Lane will take us to the River and we can 
turn left along the towing path. Ham House lies 
to the left. 

In the account of the duel in Nicholas Nickleby 
between Sir Mulberry Hawk and Lord Frederick 
Verisopht we read : 

" What do you say to one of the meadows 
opposite Twickenham by the river side ? " 
The Captain saw no objection. 
" Shall we join company in the avenue of 
trees which leads from Petersham to Ham House, 
and settle the exact spot when we arrive there ? " 
They stopped at the avenue gate and alighted. 
. . . and at length turned to the right, and, 
taking a track across a little meadow, passed 
Ham House, and came into some fields beyond. 
We are now on the road to Twickenham, whence 
came Clennam to visit Mr. Meagles and Pet at the 
cottage there. 

It was a charming place (none the worse for 
being a little eccentric) on the road by the river, 
and just what the residence of the Meagles family 
ought to be. It stood in a garden . . . and it 
was defended by a goodly show of handsome 
trees and spreading evergreens. . . . Within 
view was the peaceful river and the ferry boat. 
. . Before breakfast in the morning Arthur 

N 



194 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

walked out to look about him. As the morning 

was fine and he had an hour on his hands he 

crossed the river by the ferry and strolled along 

a footpath through some meadows. 

Eel Pie Island lies a little beyond the ferry. It 

was one of the resorts of Dickens, and in Nicholas 

Nickleby he sends one of the Kenwigs family upon 

an excursion there " to make merry upon a collation, 

bottled beer, shrub and shrimps, and to dance in the 

open air." 

At 4 Ailsa Park Villas, Twickenham, Dickens 
stayed for a time in 1838. The house is in the 
Isleworth Road near St. Margaret's Station 



ITINERARY AND REFERENCES 
ROUTE TWELVE 

HYDE PARK CORNER TO TWICKENHAM 



Belgrave Square 

Reprinted, Out of Town 
Nickleby, 21 

Belgravia 

Miscell. P. : Conventions 
Mutual, TI, 3 

Brompton 

Nickleby, 21 

Cadogan Place 

Nickleby, 21 

Sloane Street 
Nickleby, 21 

Chelsea Bun House (site) 

Barnaby, 42 
Bleak House, 53 

Ranelagh Gardens (site) 
Two Cities, II, 12 

Chelsea Reach 

Expectations, 36 

Chelsea 

Bleak House, 13, 53 
Barnaby, 53, 16, 42 
Curiosity, 8 
Nickleby, 48, 21 
Uncommercial, 27 
Pickwick, 23 
Reprinted, Patent 

Detective 
Mutual, I, I5*t * 

Battersea 

Haunted Man 
Reprinted, Down-tide 

St. Luke's Church 

Life 

11 Selwood Terrace 

Here Dickens lodged in 1836 

Fulham 

Dornt, I, 1 6 
Dombey, 24 

Putney 

Copperfield, 38, 41 
Domt, I, 1 6 
Clock, III 



Hammersmith 

Expectations, 21, 22, 46 

Nickleby, 17 

Sketches: Sentiment, Scenes, 6 

Uncommercial, 10 

Twist, 21 

Miscell. P. : Gone to the Dogs 

Turnham Green 

Two Cities, I, i 
Chiswick 
Mutual, I, 6 
Twist, 21 

Kew Bridge 

Twist, 21 

Kew 

Expectations, 30 
Brentford 

Expectations, 42 
Mutual, 1 6 
Twist, 21 
Uncommercial, 10 

Richmond 

Mutual, IV, i 
Expectations, 33 
Sketches : River ; Monmouth 
Pickwick, 57 

Richmond Green 
Expectations, 33 

Star and Garter (site of) 
Life 

Petersham 

Life 

Nickleby, 50 
Twickenham 

Nickleby, 50, 52 

Life 

Dorrit, I, 16 

Ham House 

Nickleby, 50 

Twickenham Ferry 

Dorrit, I, 17 
Eel Pie Island 

Nickleby, 52 
Life 



195 



ROUTE THIRTEEN 

DOWN THE STRAND AND FLEET STREET 
(TRAFALGAR SQUARE TO ST. PAUL'S) 

NOWHERE in the streets of London is the ebb and 
flow of the tide of Dickens' s life better mirrored than 
in the illustrious highway called the Strand ; it 
reflects the novelist as "a very small boy indeed, 
both in years and stature/' going to view the lion 
over the gateway of Northumberland House (Gone 
Astray) ; it reflects him, but a few years later, walk- 
ing disconsolately to Warren's Blacking Factory, 
near Hungerford Bridge, and to the shop at the corner 
of Chandos Street and Bedford Street, to tie up the 
pots of blacking in company with Bob Fagin, " near 
the second window as you come from Bedford 
Street " ; it reflects him, still in those days, making 
his dinner off " a stout hale pudding, heavy and 
flabby, with great raisins in it, stuck in whole at 
great distances apart," which " came up hot at 
about noon every day," at " a good shop ... in 
the Strand, somewhere near where the Lowther 
Arcade is now . . . and many and many a day 
did I dine off it " ; it reflects him as the young 
reporter, at the age of twenty-two, going to the 
office of " The Morning Chronicle " at No. 332 
(now demolished) ; it reflects him walking into 
Fleet Street with his first literary contribution 
to the old " Monthly Magazine," which, " when 
it appeared in all the glory of print," he pur- 
chased from a shop in the Strand, and walked 

196 



THE STRAND AND FLEET STREET 197 

with it to Westminster Hall, his eyes dimmed with 
joy and pride ; it reflects many of the night walks 
of an " Uncommercial Traveller " in the heyday 
of his fame, from the offices of " Household Words " 
and " All the Year Round/' in Wellington Street ; 
and, finally and imperishably, it reflects a whole 
host of the children of his fancy who passed along 
the ancient highway in the pages of his books. 

Many were the creations of his fancy that passed 
along the Strand he knew so well. " We walked 
down the Strand a Sunday or two ago," he writes 
in Sketches by Boz, " behind a little group, and they 
furnished food for our amusement the whole way/' 

David Copperfield passed along, at many stages 
of his history, notably on the day of his party, when, 
" observing a hard mottled substance in the window 
of a ham and beef shop, which resembled marble, 
but was labelled Mock Turtle, I went in and bought 
a slab of it/' and towards the close of the story, 
when he walked along the Strand, through Temple 
Bar, following the clue of Martha, to be picked up at 
Blackfriars, and to end so happily at Millbank. 

Ralph Nickleby " made the best of his way to the 
Strand " to visit Miss La Creevy, " and stopped at a 
private door about half-way down the crowded 
thoroughfare. A miniature-painter lived there, for 
there was a large gilt frame screwed upon the street 
door." 

In far different frame of mind, Mr. Haredale 
" walked along the Strand " after the burning of the 
Warren by the rioters, " too proud to expose himself 
to another refusal, and of too generous a spirit to 
involve in distress or ruin any honest tradesman 
who might be weak enough to give him shelter." 

Bradley Headstone, with Rogue Riderhood at 
his side, also " walked along the Strand " on an 
eventful occasion, the former meditating, the latter 
muttering. And in Little Dorrit we read of Arthur 



198 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

Clennam " passing at nightfall along the Strand, 
and the lamplighter going on before him." 

Young Martin Chuzzlewit, after finding a lodging 
for Mark and himself, " in a court in the Strand not 
far from Temple Bar . . . passed more Golden Balls 
than all the jugglers in Europe have juggled with, 
in the course of their united performances, before 
he could determine in favour of any particular shop 
where those symbols were displayed." That this 
was in the Strand there is but little doubt. 

Then, too, we must not forget that graphic scene 
in A Tale of Two Cities after the crowd at Temple 
Bar had mobbed the hearse of the spy : 

The remodelled procession started, with a 

chimney sweep driving the hearse . . . and with 

a pieman . . . driving the mourning coach. A 

bear leader . . . was impressed as an additional 

ornament, before the cavalcade had gone far 

down the Strand ; and his bear, who was black 

and very mangy, gave quite an undertaking 

air to that part of the procession. 

Finally, we remember Dick Swiveller's ambition 

to join the tide of life that swept along the Strand 

once received a serious check: " There's only one 

avenue to the Strand left open now," he declared. 

" And I shall have to stop up that to-night with a 

pair of gloves. ... In about a month's time, unless 

my aunt sends me a remittance, I shall have to go 

three or four miles out of town to get over the way." 

So much for those who were more or less merely 

passers-by along the Strand ; other interests are 

attached to the highway and its vicinity. At the 

western extremity is Trafalgar Square, on the east 

of which stands St. Martin's Church ; here on the 

steps David Copperfield had that memorable meeting 

with Mr. Peggotty on the latter's return from his 

search for little Em'ly. 

My shortest way home was through Saint 



THE STRAND AND FLEET STREET 199 

Martin's Lane. Now the Church which gives its 

name to the lane stood in a less free situation 

at that time, there being no open space before it 

and the lane winding down to the Strand. As I 

passed the steps of the portico . . . there was 

the stooping figure of a man ..." Mr. Peggotty. 

The district was not unknown to young David, for, 

in a court at the back of the church, was a famous 

pudding shop, where the pudding " was made of 

currants, and was rather a special pudding, but was 

dear, twopenny-worth not being larger than a 

penny-worth of more ordinary pudding," and in 

St. Martin's Lane adjacent stood the coffee shop, 

also visited alike by young C.D. and young D.C., 

with the glass inscription on the door, to read which 

backward on the wrong side, " moor-eeffoC," always 

gave a shock through his blood. 

Near by is the Golden Cross Hotel fronting 
Charing Cross Station. In Pickwickian days it 
stood on the spot where Nelson's monument now 
stands. It was rebuilt on its present site in 1831-2, 
but it was to the old hotel Dickens referred in 
Sketches by Boz, Pickwick and David Copperfield. 

From the older hostelry the Pickwickians started 
off for Rochester by coach, but the present hotel 
has an archway in the rear leading to the stables, 
which calls to mind the one that caused Jingle to 
cry " Heads, heads, take care of your heads ! " 

It was to the back entrance of the hotel that David 
took Peggotty after the meeting on the Church 
Steps : 

In those days there was a side entrance to the 
stable yard of the Golden Cross . . . nearly 
opposite to where we stood. I pointed out the 
gateway . . . and we went across. 
David was already acquainted with this hostelry, 
for on his first visit to London as a young man he 
stayed at 



200 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

the Golden Cross at Charing Cross, then a 
mouldy sort of establishment in a close neigh- 
bourhood . . . my small bedchamber smelt 
like a hackney coach and was shut up like a 
family vault. 

Steerforth fortunately came to his rescue, and he 
secured a better room in the front, where " the early 
morning coaches rumbling out of the archway 
underneath " made him " dream of thunder and the 
gods." 

Next morning he describes himself " peeping out 
of window at King Charles on horseback, surrounded 
by a maze of hackney coaches and looking anything 
but regal in the drizzling rain and a dark brown fog." 
Another account of the Golden Cross is given in 
the chapter on Early Coaches in Sketches by Boz. 
Mr. Haredale, during the Gordon Riots, was 
refused refreshment at " an hot el near Charing Cross," 
but no name is given to it ; and, at Charing Cross 
also, Eugene Wrayburn witnessed the " ridiculous 
and feeble spectacle " of Jenny Wren's bad boy 
trying to cross the road. 

The Grand Hotel occupies the site of Northumber- 
land House, referred to on page 1 96, to which Dickens 
also humorously alludes in Horatio Sparkins ; 
" Miss Malderton was as well known as the lion on 
the top of Northumberland House, and had equal 
chance of going off." 

Proceeding eastward, Craven Street on the right 
reminds us that at an hotel here Mr. Brownlow had 
the interview with Rose Maylie that resulted in the 
recovery of Oliver Twist, and that, at the bottom, 
on the site now occupied by the Railway Station, 
formerly stood Hungerford Market, and the Blacking 
Warehouse, where Dickens worked as a boy. 

The blacking warehouse was the last house on 
the left-hand side of the way at old Hungerford 
Stairs. It was a crazy, tumble-down old house, 



THE STRAND AND FLEET STREET aoi 

abutting of course on the river, and literally 
overrun with rats. . . . The counting-house was 
on the first floor looking over the coal barges 
and the river. There was a recess in it, in which 
I was to sit and work. My work was to cover 
the pots of paste blacking first with a piece of 
oil paper, and then with a piece of blue paper, 
to tie them round with a string, and then to 
clip the paper close and neat all round until it 
looked as smart as a pot of ointment from an 
apothecary's shop. 

It was in this neighbourhood that Mr. Peggotty 
lodged in the intervals of his travels abroad, to find 
his niece " over a chandler's shop only two streets 
away from Buckingham Street," where the meals 
were flavoured by " a miscellaneous taste of tea, 
coffee, butter, bacon, cheese, new loaves, firewood, 
candles and walnut ketchup continually ascending 
from the shop." 

Mr. Dick occupied Mr. Peggotty's lodging on the 
occasion when Mrs. Crupp had informed him " that 
there wasn't room to swing a cat there " ; but as Mr. 
Dick justly observed ..." you know, Trotwood, 
I don't want to swing a cat. I never do swing a cat. 
Therefore what does that signify to me ? " 

There was a low wooden colonnade before 
the door (not very unlike that before the house 
where the little man and woman used to live 
in the old weather-glass) which pleased Mr. 
Dick mightily. 

From Hungerford Stairs the Micawbers set off by 
boat to Gravesend, en route for Australia. They 
had lodgings meanwhile " in a little dirty tumble- 
down public-house which in those days was close 
to the stairs and whose protruding wooden rooms 
overhung the river." Their room we are told was 
" one of the wooden chambers upstairs, with the 
tide flowing underneath." This was no doubt the 



202 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

White Swan that existed close to the Blacking Ware- 
house and figures in David Copperfield. 

When I dined regularly and handsomely, I had 
a saveloy and a penny loaf, or a fourpenny plate 
of red beef from a cook's shop ; or a plate of 
bread and cheese and a glass of beer from a 
miserable old public-house opposite our place of 
business, called the Lion, or the Lion and some- 
thing else, that I have forgotten. 
In Buckingham Street at the last house on the 
left (demolished a few years ago) lived young David 
with Mrs. Crupp ; here, too, Dickens himself had 
lodgings in about 1834. 

Further along, on the left, is Bedford Street ; 
here at the corner of Chandos Street the Civil 
Service Stores occupy the site of the shop al- 
ready mentioned in which the young Dickens so 
dexterously covered the tops of the blacking pots. 
We cross the road to Durham House Street, leading 
to the Adelphi Arches referred to below. The next 
turning takes us to the Adelphi Hotel, where Mrs. 
Edson stayed prior to her taking lodgings at Mrs. 
Lirriper's ; but its greater claim to fame is that as 
Osborne's Hotel, Adelphi, it figures in the closing 
scenes of Pickwick Papers. 

Further on is Adelphi Terrace where the same 
Mrs. Edson " went straight down to the terrace 
and along it, and looked over the iron rail. . . . 
The desertion of the wharf below, and the flowing 
of the high water there, seemed to settle her purpose 
. and among the dark and dismal arches she 
went in a wild way. . . . We were on the wharf and 
she stopped " ; fortunately to be saved by good 
Mrs. Lirriper, who exclaimed, "Well I never thought 
nobody ever got here except me to order my coal, 
and the Major to smoke his cigar/' 

Dickens as a boy was fond of these dark arches of 
the Adelphi. They are partly closed now ; but the 



THE STRAND AND FLEET STREET 203 

view from " the terrace which overhangs the river," 
whither Arthur Clennam in Little Dorrit followed 
Tattycoram and Rigaud, and where they were met 
by Miss Wade, is a very interesting one, as below 
here was the coal wharf and the old Fox-under-the- 
Hill public-house referred to in David Copperfield. 

I was fond of wandering about the Adelphi, 
because it was a mysterious place with those 
dark arches. I see myself emerging one evening 
from some of these arches, on a little public- 
house close to the river, with an open space 
before it, where some coal-heavers were dancing : 
to look at whom I sat down on a bench. 
On the opposite side of the Strand, Southampton 
Street leads into Covent Garden Market, a district 
replete with Dickensian interests which is dealt 
with in Route Five. 

Further on, we are reminded that Miss La Creevy 
must have had her house hereabouts, from which 
point she could watch the clerics going to Exeter 
Hall, on the site of which the Strand Palace Hotel 
now stands. 

Dickens, like Mr. Watkins Tottle, had a " small 
parlour in Cecil Street, Strand," but this street has 
been covered by the hotel which bears its name. 
This was in 1833, and he gave warning so he wrote 
to his friend Kolle because they " put too much 
water in the hashes, lost the nutmeg grater and 
attended on me most miserably." 

The office of Household Words stood in Wellington 
Street, opposite the Lyceum Theatre, but the build- 
ing was pulled down when Aldwych was constructed. 
At Number 26 (formerly n) Wellington Street, was 
the office of All The Year Round. The building 
still stands, but houses an entirely different business. 
Here Dickens furnished bachelor chambers in his 
later years. 
Waterloo Bridge leads off from the opposite side 



204 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

of the Strand. It was originally called the Strand 
Bridge. In the arches below, Sam Weller had 
experience of the " Twopenny rope." 

Somerset House has a family interest, as Dickens's 
father was a clerk here, together with Thomas 
Barrow, whose sister he married in 1809, and who 
became the mother of the novelist. The marriage 
took place at St. Mary-le-Strand Church, almost 
opposite. 

Mr. Minns, of Dickens's first story, Mr. Minns and 
His Cousin, was also a clerk at Somerset House. 

A little beyond Somerset House is Strand Lane, 
where the Roman Bath visited by David Copperfield 
is to be found. 

There was an old Roman bath in those days 
at the bottom of one of the streets out of the 
Strand it may be there still in which I have 
had many a cold plunge. 

Norfolk Street entirely rebuilt once sheltered 
Major Jackman at Mrs. Lirriper' s Lodgings. 

The Major it was who said, when taking the 
parlours, that there was " no smell of coal sacks," 
which drew forth from Mrs. Lirriper the scathing 
remark that she thought he was " referring to 
Arundel, or Surrey, or Howard, but not to Norfolk," 
indicating by that the streets adjacent. 

Mrs. Lirriper was married at St. Clement Danes 
Church in the Strand close by. 

At the corner of Arundel Street is Kelly's, on the 
site of the shop of Chapman & Hall, where Dickens 
purchased the magazine containing his first effort 
at fiction. 

He thus records it in the preface to Pickwick, 
in telling how the book came to be written : 

When I opened my door in Furnival's Inn to 
the partner who represented the firm, I recognised 
in him the person from whose hands I had bought, 
two or three years previously, and whom I had 



THE STRAND AND FLEET STREET 205 

never seen before or since, my first copy of the 
magazine in which my first effusion a paper 
in the " Sketches/' called Mr. Minns and His 
Cousin . . . appeared. 

In Essex Street, Pip found for his uncle, Mr. 
Provis, alias Magwitch, " a respectable lodging- 
house, the back of which looked into the Temple " 
and was almost within hail of his own chamber in 
Garden Court (see Route One) . 

The " Griffin " where Temple Bar once stood 
marks the end of the Strand and the entrance to the 
City. 

What a fund of romance was lost to London town 
when Temple Bar was taken from us. Posterity 
had to bow its head to the exigencies of time, and 
a great Dickens landmark disappeared. 

As Temple Bar stands to-day at the entrance to 
Theobald's Park, Middlesex, it is meaningless to us. 
No longer is it the gateway to the magic city of the 
giants, through which Dickens pictured himself pass- 
ing when he " got lost one day in the City of London " 
and resolved to " try about the city for any opening 
of a Whittington nature/' When he came to it, 
he tells us, in Gone Astray, it took him half an hour 
to stare at it, and he left it unfinished even then. 
" It seemed/' he said, " a wicked old place, albeit 
a noble monument of architecture and a paragon of 
utility." 

In the opening chapter of Bleak House, Temple Bar 
is not treated with quite so much respect, for we 
find it referred to as " that leaden-headed old 
obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold 
of a leaden-headed old corporation," and, again, in 
the same book, on the hottest day in the long 
vacation, it says, " Temple Bar gets so hot that it 
is, to the adjacent Strand and Fleet Street, what a 
heater is in an urn, and keeps them simmering all 
night." 



206 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

The Prentice Knights of Barnaby Rudge " took 
an oath not on any account ... to damage or in 
any way disfigure Temple Bar, which was strictly 
constitutional, and always to be approached with 
reserve." 

Temple Bar was " headless and forlorn in these 
degenerate days " when Mr. Dorrit passed under it 
also, like us, on the way to the City and on a like 
mission David Copperfield and Dan'l Peggotty 
" came through Temple Bar into the city," whilst 
Tom Pinch actually had the temerity to stop inside 
Temple Bar itself to laugh heartily over the " beef- 
steak pudding made with flour and eggs, until John 
Westlock and his sister fairly ran away from him and 
left him to have his laugh out by himself." 

With all these thoughts crowding upon us, let us 
imagine we pass through Temple Bar into the City 
by way of Fleet Street. Immediately on our right, 
No. i Fleet Street marks the site of the older premises 
which Dickens called Tellsons Bank in A Tale of 
Two Cities. 

Tellsons Bank by Temple Bar was an old- 
fashioned place. ... It was very small, very 
dark, very ugly, very incommodious . . the 
triumphant perfection of inconvenience. After 
bursting open a door of idiotic obstinacy with a 
weak rattle in its throat you fell into Tellsons 
down two steps, and came to your senses in a 
miserable little shop with two little counters, 
where the oldest of men made your cheque shake 
as if the wind rustled it, while they examined the 
signature by the dingiest of windows. ... In 
the musty back closet . . . Mr. Lorry sat at 
great books ruled for figures, with perpendicular 
iron bars to his window as if that were ruled for 
figures too, and everything under the clouds 
were a sum. 
Outside the bank, Jerry Cruncher was wont to sit 



THE STRAND AND FLEET STREET 207 

on the " wooden stool made out of a broken backed 
chair cut down," a character " as well known to 
Fleet Street and the Temple as the Bar itself 
and almost as ill-looking." 

What a crowd of characters did Dickens cause to 
pass along Fleet Street ! First Mr. Pickwick on 
his way to the Fleet when 

the hackney-coach jolted along Fleet Street, as 
hackney-coaches usually do. The horses " went 
better," the driver said, when they had anything 
before them (they must have gone at a most 
extraordinary pace when there was nothing), 
and so the vehicle kept behind a cart ; when the 
cart stopped, it stopped ; and, when the cart 
went on again, it did the same. Mr. Pickwick 
sat opposite the tipstaff ; and the tipstaff sat 
with his hat between his knees, whistling a tune, 
and looking out of the coach window. 
Then Mr. Stryver, " projecting himself into Soho 
while he was yet on Saint Dunstan's side of Temple 
Bar bursting in his full-blown way along the pave- 
ment to the jostlement of all the weaker people." 
Then Mr. Boffin, " jogging along Fleet Street . . . 
when he became aware that he was closely tracked 
and observed by a man of genteel appearance," who 
was, of course, John Rokesmith. Then little David 
Copperfield himself, who, when he had no money, 
" used to look at a venison shop in Fleet Street." 

In later years David took his old nurse Peggotty 
" to see some perspiring waxwork in Fleet Street 
(melted I should hope these twenty years)." Pro- 
bably these were Mrs. Salmon's Waxwork at No. 17, 
once the palace of Prince Henry. 

The funeral cortege of the spy, as described in 
A Tale of Two Cities, found " an unusual concourse 
pouring down Fleet Street westward," and a similar 
concourse eastward is described in Pickwick when 
Sam Weller got himself put into the Fleet to keep 



208 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

his master company. " Some little commotion was 
occasioned in Fleet Street by the pleasantry of the 
eight gentlemen in the flank who persevered in walk- 
ing four abreast. " 

Maypole Hugh crossed the road hereabouts to 
ply the knocker of Middle Temple Gate, and opposite 
the Inner Temple Gate, a little further on, Bradley 
Headstone rested, " baffled, exasperated and weary " 
after the gate had closed on Eugene Wrayburn and 
Mortimer Lightwood. 
The Temple is dealt with in Route One. 
Chancery Lane, on the left, is one of the main 
arteries of Legal Land, and is also dealt with in 
Route One. 

Just beyond is Clifford's Inn, where the "tenant 
of a top set bad character shut himself up in his 
bedroom closet, and took a dose of arsenic/' to be 
found by his successor some months later, as narrated 
at the " Magpie and Stump " in Pickwick. 

Tip Dorrit found " a stool and twelve shillings a 
week ... in the office of an attorney ... in 
Clifford's Inn," and here " languished for six 
months." Clifford's Inn is also referred to in Bleak 
House by Trooper George as being the office of 
Melchisedeck, the legal agent of old Smallweed ; and, 
in the archway, Rokesmith made his secretarial 
proposals to Mr. Boffin. 

Would you object to turn aside into this place 

I think it is called Clifford's Inn where we can 

hear one another better than in the roaring street? 

. . Mr. Boffin glanced into the mouldy little 

plantation, or cat preserve, of Clifford's Inn, as 

it was that day. . . . Sparrows were there, cats 

were there, dry rot and wet rot were there, but 

it was not otherwise a suggestive spot. 

The fact that the Dickens Fellowship has its offices 

in its precincts adds a further Dickensian association 

to the old Inn. 



THE STRAND AND FLEET STREET 209 

Next to Clifford's Inn is St. Dunstan's Church. 
The old church, with its clock and two giants as 
seen by Maypole Hugh, and David Copperfield, and 
also by young Charles in Gone Astray was pulled 
down in 1830. This, too, was the church of The 
Chimes. 

High up in the steeple of an old church, far 
above the light and murmur of the town . . 
dwelt the chimes I tell of. They were old 
chimes, trust me ; centuries ago these bells had 
been baptised by bishops. 

Outside the church was the beat of Toby (or 
Trotty) Veck, the messenger, and here he used to trot 
up and down taking consolation from the bells. 

On the opposite side of the street is Serjeants' Inn, 
mentioned in connection with Mr. Pickwick's journey 
to the Fleet Prison. Although the front is new, 
many of the old buildings are to be seen by passing 
through the gate- way. 

At No. 166 Fleet Street is Johnson's Court, where 
were the offices of the old " Monthly Magazine " 
that published Dickens's first contribution to litera- 
ture, the MS. of which he dropped " stealthily one 
evening at twilight, with fear and trembling, into 
a dark letter-box in a dark office up a dark court in 
Fleet Street." 

The " Daily News " office further along, on the 
right, reminds us that it was Dickens who started 
the paper in 1846. The present offices in Bouverie 
Street are adorned with a head of Dickens carved 
in the stonework. 

At No. 146 on the left is Wine Office Court, in 
which is that famous tavern, the Cheshire Cheese. 
Although never mentioned by name, so famous an 
inn, with its associations with Dr. Johnson, must 
have been well known to Dickens, and it is thought 
probable that he had the Cheshire Cheese in mind 
when Sydney Carton induced Charles Darnay to dine 

o 



210 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

with him, after the latter 's acquittal at the Old 
Bailey of the charge of high treason. 

Let me show you the nearest tavern to dine 
in. ... Drawing his arm through his own he 
took him down Ludgate Hill to Fleet Street, and 
so up a covered way into a tavern. Here they 
were shown a little room. 

In Whitefrairs Street opposite is Hanging Sword 
Alley where Jerry Cruncher lived with his better 
half, addicted to " Flopping." 

Mr. Cruncher's apartments were not in a 
savoury neighbourhood, and were but two in 
number, even if a closet with a single pane of 
glass in it might be counted as one. 
Mr. George, in Bleak House, paid particular atten- 
tion to this curiously named alley in walking 
from his shooting gallery near Leicester Square to 
the Bagnets at Blackfriars through " the cloisterly 
Temple and by Whitefriars (though not without a 
glance at Hanging Sword Alley, which would seem 
to be something in his way)/' 

Fleet Street ends at Ludgate Circus ; to the right 
is Blackfrairs (see Route Seven). To the left runs 
Farringdon Street, formerly Fleet Market, on the 
right of which, where Memorial Hall now stands, 
was once the Fleet Prison, memorable from its 
associations with Pickwick. 

Mr. Pickwick alighted at the gate of the Fleet. 
The tipstaff, looking over his shoulder to see 
that his charge was following close at his heels, 
preceded Mr. Pickwick into the prison ; turning 
to the left, after they had entered, they passed 
through an open door into a lobby from which a 
heavy gate opposite to that by which they had 
entered, and which was guarded by a stout 
turnkey with the key in his hand led at once 
into the interior of the prison. . . . 

They passed through the inner gate, and des- 



THE STRAND AND FLEET STREET 211 

cended a short flight of steps. The key was 
turned after them ; and Mr. Pickwick found 
himself, for the first time in his life, within the 
walls of a debtors' prison. 

Just under the railway arch in Ludgate Hill on 
the left is La Belle Sauvage Yard where stood the 
famous coaching inn which Tony Weller made his 
headquarters : further on, at No. 42, was the London 
Coffee House, where Arthur Clennan sat on the 
Sunday of his arrival in London, watching the people 
sheltering from the rain in the " public passage 
opposite, and listening to the bells ringing ' Come 
to church, come to church. . . . They won't come, 
they won't come/ " The house still exists little 
altered in appearance structurally. 

In the distance St. Paul's looms large as it appeared 
to so many of Dickens's people. " There be Paul's 
Church. Ecod, he be a soizable 'un, he be." Thus John 
Browdie to his wife on their wedding trip. " Ralph 
Nickleby ... as he passed St. Paul's, stepped aside 
into a door-way to set his watch, with his hand on 
the key and his eye on the Cathedral dial." 

In Master Humphrey's Clock we have a long ac- 
count of a visit made to the clock turret ; and David 
Copperfield " varied the legal character of settling 
Peggotty's affairs by going to the top of St. Paul's " : 
not that it afforded that good creature much pleasure, 
for " from her long attachment to her work-box it 
became a rival of the picture on the lid, and was in 
some particulars vanquished, she considered, by that 
work of art." 

In St. Paul's Churchyard, David's aunt was ac- 
costed by her husband, much to the surprise of 
David ; and Eugene Wrayburn tracked the school- 
master watching them in this neighbourhood. 

Dean's Court on the right leads to where what Mr 
Boffin called " Doctor Scommons" used to stand. Doc 
tors' Commons is described by Steerforth as "a lazy 



212 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

old nook near Saint Paul's Churchyard ... a little out- 
of-the-way place . . . that has an ancient monopoly 
in suits about people's wills and people's marriages." 
Here David worked for the proctors, Spenlow 
& Jorkins. Here, too, in earlier years had come 
Jingle for his marriage licence. At the White Hart 
in the Borough he had enquired of Sam Weller : 

" Do you know what's-a-name Doctors' 
Commons ? " 
" Yes, sir." 
" Where is it ? " 

" Paul's Churchyard, sir ; low archway on 
the carriage side, bookseller's at one corner, hotel 
on the other, and two porters in the middle as 
touts for licences. . . . Two coves in vhite aprons 
touches their hats wen you walk in ' Licence, 
sir, licence ? ' Queer sort, them, and their mas'rs 
too, sir Old Baily Proctors and no mistake.' 
" What do they do ? " enquired the gentleman. 
" Do ! You, sir ! That a'nt the wost on it, 
neither. They puts things into old gen'lm'n's 
heads as they never dreamed of." 
This prompted Sam Weller to tell the amusing 
tale of his father's adventures with the touts who 
used to infest the neighbourhood. 

In "an upstairs room ... of a certain coffee- 
house which in those days had a door opening into 
the Commons, just within the little archway in 
St. Paul's Churchyard," David Copperfield had that 
momentous interview with Mr. Spenlow and Miss 
Murdstpne, as narrated in Chapter 38. 

An interesting association with this district is 
that Dickens rented an office at No. 5 Bell Yard, off 
Carter Lane, in 1831, whilst a reporter for one of the 
offices in the Commons. How near we were to losing 
Dickens as a novelist, at this period, is told in a 
letter he wrote to Forster some years later : 

" I wrote to Bartley, who was stage-manager 
of Covent Garden Theatre, and told him how 



THE STRAND AND FLEET STREET 213 

young I was, and exactly what I thought I 
could do ; and that I believed I had a strong 
perception of character and oddity, and a natural 
power of reproducing in my own person what I 
observed in others. This was at the time when 
I was at Doctors' Commons as a shorthand 
writer for the proctors. And I recollect I wrote 
the letter from a little office I had there, where 
the answer came also. There must have been 
something in my letter that struck the authorities, 
for Bartley wrote to me almost immediately to 
say that they were busy getting up the ' Hunch- 
back ' (so they were), but that they would 
communicate with me again in a fortnight. 
Punctual to the time another letter came, with 
an appointment to do anything of Mathews I 
pleased before him and Charles Kemble, on a 
certain day at the theatre. My sister Fanny 
was in the secret, and was to go with me to play 
the songs. I was laid up when the day came with 
a terrible bad cold and inflammation of the face, 
the beginning, by the by, of that annoyance in 
one ear to which I am subject to this day. I 
wrote to say so, and added that I would resume 
my 'application next season. I made a great 
splash in the gallery soon afterwards ; the 
Chronicle opened to me ; I had a distinction in 
the little world of the newspaper, which made 
one like it ; began to write ; didn't want money ; 
had never thought of the stage but as the means 
of getting it ; gradually left off turning my 
thoughts that way, and never resumed the idea. 
I never told you this, did I ? See how near I 
may have been to another sort of life." 
At No. 29 Knightrider Street is the Horn Tavern 

on the site of the Horn Coffee House, to which Mr. 

Pickwick sent a messenger from the Fleet Prison, 

for a bottle or two (or " bottle or six ") of wine to 

celebrate Mr. Winkle's visit. 



ITINERARY AND REFERENCES 
ROUTE THIRTEEN 



TRAFALGAR SQUARE TO ST. PAUL S 



Trafalgar Square 

St. Martin's Church 

Barnaby, 44 
Copperfield, 40 n 
Sketches : Coaches 
Uncommercial, 13 

St. Martin's Court 
Curiosity, i 

Golden Cross Hotel 

Sketches : Coaches 
Pickwick. 2 
Copperfield, 19, 40 

Charing Cross 

Nickleby, 2, 41 

Mrs. Lirriper 

Barnaby, 66 

Sketches : Shabby Genteel 

Mutual, III, 10 

Pickwick, 2 

Copperfield, 19 

Northumberland House (site) 
Sketches : Sparkins, Scotland 

Yard 
Gone Astray 

Craven Street 

Twist, 41 

Hungerford Market (site) 
Life 
Copperfield, n, 32, 46, 35 

Hungerford Stairs (site) 
Copperfield, 57 
Lite 

Buckingham Street 
Copperfield, 23 
Here Dickens lodged in 1843 



Strand 

Copperfield, n, 24 
Curiosity, 8 
Nickleby, 3, 5 
Barnaby, 66 
Mutual, III, n 
Domt, II, 9 
Sketches : Thoughts 
Chuzzlewit 13, 48 
Two Cities, II, 14 
Life 

Adelphi Arches 
Copperfield, n, 23 
Life 
Pickwick, 42 

Adelphi Hotel (late Osborne's) 

Pickwick, 54 
Lirriper 

Adelphi Terrace 
Uncommercial, 14 
Lirriper 
Dornt, II, 9 

Chandos Street 
Life 

Bedford Street 

Life 

Cecil Street (site of) 

Here Dickens lodged in 1833 
Sketches: Tottle 

Adelphi Theatre 

Pickwick, 31 
Life 

Exeter Hall (site of) 

Nickleby, 5 

214 



THE STRAND AND FLEET STREET 215 



Miss La Creevy's House 
Nickleby, 3 

Lyceum Theatre 

Reprinted, Bill-sticking 

Wellington Street 
Life 
Reprinted, Detective P. 

Waterloo Bridge (formerly Strand 
Bridge) 

Reprinted, Down-tide 

Life 

Bleak House, 21 

Uncommercial, 13 

Sketches : Drunkards 

Pickwick, 1 6 

Somerset House 

Life 

Sketches : Minns 

St. Mary-Ie-Strand Church 

Life 
Uncommercial, 14 

Strand Lane 

Sketches : Excursions 
Copperfield, 35 

Roman Bath, Strand Lane 

Copperfield, 35 

Surrey Street 

Lirripor 

Norfolk Street 

Limper 

Howard Street 

Lirnper 

Arundel Street 

Liniper 

Strand, No. 186 
Life 

St. Clement Danes 

Lirnper 
Somebody's Luggage 

Clement's Inn (site of) 

Uncommercial, 14 



Lyon's Inn (site of) 
Uncommercial, 14 

Boswell Court (site of) 
Sketches 

Essex -Street 

Expectations, 40 

Temple Bar (site of) 

Gone Astray 

Copperfield, 46 

Barnaby, 8 

Chuzzlewit, 45 

Mutual III, 2 ; IV, to 

Bleak House, i, 19 

Clock, I 

Two Cities, I, 12 ; II, 12, 24 

Dornt, II, 17 

The Temple 

(See Route i) 

Tellsons Bank (site) 
Two Cities, II, 12, 24 

Fleet Street 

Two Cities, II, 12, 14 
Holly Tree 
Expectations, 45 
Barnaby, 67, 15 
Mutual, I, 8 
Sketches : Tottle 
Pickwick, 43, 40 
Copperfield, n, 23, 33 

Rainbow Tavern (site), No. 15 
Sketches : Bounce 

Mrs. Salmon's Waxworks No. 17 

Copperfield, 33 

Bell Yard 

Bleak House, 15, 14 

Chancery Lane 

(See Route i) 

Clifford's Inn 

Pickwick, 21 
Dorrit, I, 7 
Bleak House, 34 
Mutual, I, 8 

St. Dunstan's Chureh 

Barnaby, 40 



2l6 



THE LONDON OF DICKENS 



Copperfield, 23 
Two Cities, II, 12 
Chimes 
Gone Astray 
Clock 

Serjeants' Inn 

Pickwick, 40, 43 
Bleak House, 19 

Johnson's Court 

Life 

Bouverie Street 

(Daily News Office) 
Life 

Whtefriars 

Two Cities, II, i 
Mutual, I, 12 
Bleak House, 27 
Sketches : Tales, 12 

Hanging Sword Alley 
Two Cities, II, i 
Bleak House, 27 

Shoe Lane 

Sketches : Omnibuses 

Wine Office Court 

Two Cities, II, 4 

Bridewell (site of) 

Barnaby, 82, 66, 49 
Twist, 6 

Fleet (site of) 

Pickwick, 40, 43 
Barnaby, 8, 67 
Bleak House, 24 
Nickleby, 55 

Fleet Market (now Farringdon 
Street) 

Pickwick, 40, 41 
Miscell. P. : Sleep Startle 
Barnaby, 8, 67, 59, 40 

laid Gate (site) 
Clock 

Ludgate Hill 
Copperfield, 23 



Dorrit, I, 3 
Nickleby, 38 
Two Cities, II, i 

La Belle Sauvage 

Pickwick, 10 

Old Bailey 

(See Route 2) 

London Coffee House 

Dorrit, I, 3 

St. Paul's Cathedral 

Nickleby, 3, 39 
Two Cities, II, 6 
Sketches : Shops 
Barnaby, 67 
Clock 

Dombey, 48 
Copperfield, 33 
Twist, 1 8 
Bleak House, 30 
Chuzzlewit, 38 
Uncommercial, 34 
Mutual, III, i 
Dornt, I, 3 
Expectations, 20 

St. Paul's Churchyard 

Mutual, III, 10 ; I, 8 
Reprinted : Bill-sticking 
Barnaby, 37 
Carol, i 
Copperfield, 23 
Dorrit, II, 34 ; I, 3 

Doctors' Commons 
Dornt, II, 34 
Sketches : Doctors' C. 
Pickwick, 10, 44 
Mutual, I, 8 
Life 
Clock 

Copperfield, 23, 38 
No Thoroughfare 

Horn Coffee House 

Pickwick, 44 

Bell Yard, Carter Lane 

Life 



ROUTE FOURTEEN 
A CITY ROUNDABOUT 

(BANK TO THE TOWER AND RETURN) 

APPROPRIATELY enough, Dickens, in the guise of an 
Uncommercial Traveller, paid frequent visits to the 
one square mile centring in the Bank and known as 
the City. The account of one such ramble he pre- 
faces as follows : 

When I think I deserve particularly well of 

myself, and have earned the right to enjoy a 

little treat, I stroll from Covent Garden into the 

City of London, after business hours there, on a 

Saturday, or better yet on a Sunday, and 

roam about its deserted nooks and corners. It is 

necessary to the full enjoyment of these journeys 

that they should be made in summer time, for 

then the retired spots that I love to haunt are 

at their idlest and dullest. A gentle fall of rain 

is not objectionable, and a warm mist sets off 

my favourite retreats to decided advantage. 

With the Bank, Royal Exchange and Mansion 

House we have already dealt in Route Two ; some 

other City landmarks are mentioned in Routes 

Three and Seven ; the remainder are linked up in 

the present route. 

By the side of the Royal Exchange runs Cornhill, 
where Bob Cratchit " went down a slide ... in 
honour of its being Christmas Eve." Another visitor 
to Cornhill was Nadgett the mysterious, in Martin 
Chuzzlewit, who was "first seen every morning coming 

217 



218 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

down Cornhill, so exactly like the Nadgett of the 
day before as to occasion a popular belief that he 
never went to bed or took his clothes off." The 
same character, we are told, used to sit at Garraway's, 
where " he would be occasionally seen drying a very 
damp pocket-handkerchief before the fire." Garra- 
way's, a famous City coffee-house, stood until 1874 
in Change Alley, the third turning to the right in 
Cornhill. It was from Garraway's that Mr. Pick- 
wick indited hisUJfamous " Chops and Tomata 
Sauce " epistle to Mrs. Bardell. 

The Poor Relation used to tell the assembled 
family that he went into the City every day he 
didn't know why and sat in Garraway's Coffee 
House. Mr. Flintwinch was also a regular visitor 
there, as well as to the Jerusalem Coffee House in 
Cowper Court, the next turning to Change Alley. 

In The City of The Absent (Uncommercial Traveller) 
he asks : " Where are all the people who on busy 
working-days pervade these scenes ? " 

And here is Garraway's, bolted and shuttered 
hard and fast ! It is possible to imagine the 
man who cuts the sandwiches, on his back 
in a hay-field ; it is possible to imagine his 
desk, like the desk of a clerk at church, with- 
out him ; but imagination is unable to pursue 
the men who wait at Garraway's all the week 
for the men who never come. When they are 
forcibly put out of Garraway's on Saturday 
night which they must be, for they never 
would go out of their own accord where do 
they vanish until Monday morning ? On the 
first Sunday that I ever strayed here, I expected 
to find them hovering about these lanes, like 
restle3s ghosts, and trying to peep into Garraway's 
through chinks in the shutters, if not endeavour- 
ing to turn the lock of the door with false keys, 
picks and screw-drivers. But the wonder is 



A CITY ROUNDABOUT 219 

that they go clean away ! And, now I think of 
it, the wonder is that every working-day pervader 
of these scenes goes clean away. The man who 
sells the dogs' collars and the little toy coal- 
scuttles feels under as great an obligation to go 
afar off as Glyn & Co., or Smith, Payne & Smith. 
There is an old monastery-crypt under Garra- 
way's (I have been in it among the port wine), 
and perhaps Garraway's, taking pity on the 
mouldy men who wait in its public room all their 
lives, gives them cool house-room down there 
over Sundays ; but the catacombs of Paris would 
not be large enough to hold the rest of the missing. 
Opposite Change Alley is the Royal Exchange 
(Route Two) . The present building, which was not 
built in the Pickwick era, swallowed up in its front 
the yard formerly known as Freeman's Court, Corn- 
hill, referred to in Pickwick as the place where 
Dodson & Fogg had their offices 

in the ground-floor front of a dingy house, at 
the very furthest end of Freeman's Court, 
Cornhill . . . the clerks catching as favourable 
glimpses of Heaven's light and Heaven's sun, 
in the course of their daily labours, as a man 
might hope to do were he placed at the bottom 
of a reasonably deep well ; and without the 
opportunity of perceiving the stars in the day- 
time, which the latter secluded situation affords. 
Prior to 1838 when the Royal Exchange was 
burned down Freeman's Court was the first court in 
Cornhill past the Royal Exchange just before reach- 
ing Finch Lane. It must not be confused (as is 
sometimes the case) with the present Newman's 
Court in Cornhill, or Freeman's Court in Cheapside. 
At No. 68 Cornhill is Sun Court. 

Mr. Jackson, of the house of Dodson & Fogg, 
Freeman's Court, Cornhill, instead of returning 
to the office . . . bent his steps direct to Sun 



220 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

Court, and, walking straight into the George and 
Vulture, demanded to know whether one Mr. 
Pickwick was within. 

This is a curious topographical error of Dickens, 
as the " George and Vulture " is in George Yard, 
Lombard Street, which could be approached from 
Cornhill by St. Michael's Alley at No. 42 Cornhill 
but not by Sun Court, which is on the opposite side 
of the road. 

At the end of Cornhill we reach the junction of 
Leadenhall Street, Gracechurch Street and Bishops- 
gate Street. Here used to stand a conduit known as 
the Standard and referred to in Barnaby Rudge. 

To the left is Bishopsgate, where Brogley, the 
broker, of DombeyandSon, " kept a shop where every 
description of second-hand furniture was exhibited 
in the most uncomfortable aspect/' The Flower 
Pot Inn was once in Bishopsgate Street, and from 
here we are told that Mr. Minns took coach to his 
cousin at Poplar Walk. 

The London Tavern was formerly in Bishops- 
gate Street. Here the first annual dinner of the 
General Theatrical Fund took place in 1846, with 
Dickens in the chair. Here too, in Nicholas Nickleby, 
we hear of the Public Meeting of the United Metro- 
politan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking 
and Punctual Delivery Company. 

A little further on, at about the junction of 
Threadneedle Street with Bishopsgate Street, un- 
doubtedly stood City Square, in which was the office 
of Cheeryble Brothers. 

Into the city they journeyed accordingly. . . . 
The old gentleman got out, with great alacrity, 
when they reached the Bank, and, once more 
taking Nicholas by the arm, hurried him along 
Threadneedle Street, and through some lanes and 
passages on the right, until they, at length, 
emerged in a quiet shady little square. Into the 



A CITY ROUNDABOUT 221 

oldest and cleanest-looking house of business in 
the square he led the way. 
The square is described as " a sufficiently desirable 
nook in the heart of a busy town like London." 

The City Square has no enclosure, save the 
lamp-post in the middle ; and has no grass but 
the weeds which spring up round its base. It is 
a quiet, little-frequented, retired spot, favourable 
to melancholy and contemplation, and appoint- 
ments of long waiting. ... It is so quiet that 
you can almost hear the ticking of your own 
watch when you stop to cool in its refreshing 
atmosphere. There is a distant hum of coaches, 
not of insects but no other sound disturbs the 
stillness of the square. The ticket porter leans 
idly against the post at the corner, comfortably 
warm, but not hot. although the day is broiling. 
Returning to Cornhill on the right almost at 
the corner of Gracechurch Street is St. Peter's 
Church, the one figuring in Our Mutual Friend, where 
Bradley Headstone had his fateful interview with 
Lizzie Hexam. 

The schoolmaster and the pupil emerged upon 
the Leadenhall Street region, spying eastward 
for Lizzie. . . . " Don't let us take the great 
leading streets where everyone walks and we 
can't hear ourselves speak. Here's a large paved 
court by this church, and quiet too. Let us go 
up here/' . . . The court brought them to a 
churchyard ; a paved square court, with a raised 
bank of earth about breast high in the middle, 
enclosed by iron rails. 

It was the coping-stone of this enclosure that 
Headstone dislodged in his passionate appeal to 
Lizzie for her hand. 

There is a court beside the church, as described 
above, and following this round we find ourselves 
in Gracechurch Street. Crossing the road and bear- 



222 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

ing to the right we find on the left Bull's Head 
Passage where the " Green Dragon " is supposed to 
have been the original of the Blue Boar, Leadenhall 
Market. Here Sam Weller wrote the famous 
valentine : 

Sam Weller walked on direct towards Leaden- 
hall Market at a good round pace. Looking 
round him, he there beheld a sign-board, on which 
the painter's art had delineated something 
remotely resembling a cerulean elephant with an 
aquiline nose in lieu of trunk. Rightly con- 
jecturing that this was the Blue Boar himself, 
he stepped into the house. 

It was to Leadenhall Market that Captain Cuttle 
came, on taking charge of Sol Gills' premises in 
Leadenhall Street, to make arrangements with a 
private watchman there " to come and put up and 
take down the shutters of the Wooden Midshipman 
every night and morning/' and the household duties 
of the little establishment were in the hands of 
" the daughter of the elderly lady who usually sat 
under the blue umbrella in Leadenhall Market/' 

Tim Linkinwater boasted that he could buy " new- 
laid eggs in Leadenhall Market any morning before 
breakfast " and accordingly " pooh pooh-ed " the 
idea of life in the country having any advantages 
over the City. 

We always imagine that Mr. Dombey's offices 
were in Leadenhall Street. Curiously enough 
Dickens is very vague in his description of the exact 
locality. 

The offices of Dombey & Son were within the 
liberties of the City of London and within the 
hearing of Bow Bells . . . Gog and Magog held 
their state within ten minutes' walk ; the Royal 
Exchange was close at hand ; the Bank of 
England, with its vaults of gold and silver 
" down among the dead men " underground, 



A CITY ROUNDABOUT 223 

was their magnificent neighbour. Just round the 
corner stood the rich East India House, teeming 
with suggestions of precious stuffs and stones, 
tigers, elephants, howhahs, hookahs, umbrellas, 
palm trees, palanquins, and gorgeops princes of a 
brown complexion sitting on carpets, with their 
slippers very much turned up at the toes. 
A later chapter tells us that the offices were 

in a court where there was an old-established stall 
of choice fruit at the corner ; where perambulat- 
ing merchants, of both sexes, offered for sale, at 
any time between the hours of ten arid five, 
slippers, pocket-books, sponges, dogs' collars, 
and Windsor soap. 

India House stood on the right of Leadenhall 
Street, on the site now occupied by East India 
Avenue. 

At No. 157 Leadenhall Street was the original 
shop of Sol Gills referred to below, then occupied by 
Messrs. Norie & Wilson, who have since removed to 
156 Minories, where the effigy of the " Little Wooden 
Midshipman " may still be seen carefully pre- 
served inside the shop. (See Route Fifteen.) 

Anywhere in the immediate vicinity there might 
be seen . . . little timber midshipmen in obso- 
lete naval uniforms, eternally employed outside 
the shop doors of nautical instrument makers in 
taking observations of the hackney coaches. . . . 
One of these effigies of that which might be 
called, familiarly, the woodenest . . . thrust it- 
self out above the pavement, right leg foremost, 
with a .suavity the least endurable, and had the 
shoe buckles and flapped waistcoat the least 
reconcilable to human reason, and bore at its 
right eye the most offensively disproportionate 
piece of machinery. 

In the Uncommercial Traveller Dickens tells us 
how he walked from Covent Garden past the India 



224 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

House, and past " my little wooden midshipman, 
after affectionately patting him on one leg of his 
knee-shorts for old acquaintance' sake." 

Almost opposite Lime Street is St. Mary Axe, 
but it would be quite impossible to-day to identify 
the " yellow, overhanging, plaster-fronted house " 
which was the office of Pubsey & Co., in Our Mutual 
Friend, presided over by Riah, the Jew. In the 
pretty roof garden on this house Lizzie Hexam and 
Jenny Wren loved to sit and talk. 

A turning on the right leads to Bevis Marks where 
Dick Swiveller was clerk to Sampson Brass. 

The atmosphere of Mr. Brass's office was of a 
close and earthy kind and besides being frequently 
impregnated with strong whiffs of the second- 
hand wearing apparel exposed for sale in Duke's 
Place and Houndsditch had a decided flavour of 
rats and mice and a taint of mouldiness. 
In a letter to Forster in 1840 Dickens speaks of a 
visit paid to Bevis Marks : 

I intended calling on you this morning on my 
way back from Bevis Marks whither I went to 
look at a house for Sampson Brass. But I got 
mingled up in a kind of social hash with the 
Jews of Houndsditch, and roamed about among 
them till I came out in Moorfields quite un- 
expectedly. 

The Red Lion in Bevis Marks is generally con- 
sidered to be the hostelry referred to by Dick 
Swiveller when he stated, " There is mild porter in 
the immediate vicinity." 

The street continues as Duke Street and leads 
into Aldgate (see Route Fifteen), where we turn to 
the right, into Fenchurch Street. 

A few turnings down on the left after noting 

Mark Lane to which we refer later is Mincing Lane. 

Bella Wilf er . . . arrived in the drug-flavoured 

region of Mincing Lane, with the sensation of 



A CITY ROUNDABOUT 225 

having just opened a drawer in a chemist's shop. 
The counting-house of Chicksey, Veneering & 
Stobbles . . . was a wall-eyed ground-floor by 
a dark gateway, and Bella was considering, as she 
approached it, could there be any precedent in 
the City for her going in and asking for R. Wilfer, 
when whom should she see, sitting at one of the 
windows with the plate-glass sash raised, but 
R. Wilfer himself, preparing to take a slight 
refection. On approaching nearer, Bella dis- 
cerned that the refection had the appearance of 
a small cottage-loaf and a pennyworth of milk. 
Simultaneously with this discovery on her part, her 
father discovered her, and invoked the echoes of 
Mincing Lane to exclaim " My gracious me ! " 
The fourth house on the left next to Dunster 
Court has been identified as being, in all probability, 
the office in question. 

At the end of Mincing Lane is Great Tower Street. 
Here we turn to the left. The narrow streets on the 
right lead into Lower Thames Street and the river 
side. Hereabouts was undoubtedly the Cripple 
Corner of No Thoroughfare. 

In the court-yard in the City of London, which 
was No Thoroughfare either for vehicles or foot- 
passengers, a court-yard diverging from a steep, 
a slippery and a winding street connecting 
Tower Street with the Middlesex shore of the 
Thames, stood the place of business of Wilding 
& Co., Wine Merchants. Probably as a jocose 
acknowledgment of the obstructive character of 
this main approach, the point nearest to its base 
at which one could take the river (if so inodor- 
ously minded) bore the appellation Break Neck 
Stairs. The court-yard itself had likewise been 
descriptively entitled in old time Cripple Corner 
Mark Lane is on the left. The district is referred to 
in Chapter 9 of The Uncommercial Traveller. 

P 



226 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

Rot and mildew and dead citizens formed the 
uppermost scent, while, infused into it in a 
dreamy way not at all displeasing, was the 
staple character of the neighbourhood. In the 
churches about Mark Lane, for example, there 
was a dry whiff of wheat ; and I accidentally 
struck an airy sample of barley out of an aged 
hassock in one of them. From Rood Lane to 
Tower Street, and thereabouts, there was often 
a subtle flavour of wine, sometimes of tea. 
One church near Mincing Lane smelt like a 
druggist's drawer. Behind the Monument the 
service had a flavour of damaged oranges, which, 
a little further down towards the river, tempered 
into herrings, and gradually toned into a cos- 
mopolitan blast of fish. In one church, the 
exact counterpart of the church in the " Rake's 
Progress " where the hero is being married to the 
horrible old lady, there was no speciality of 
atmosphere, until the organ shook a perfume of 
hides all over us from some adjacent warehouse. 
Passing Mark Lane and Seething Lane we reach 
Hart Street. On the left of Hart Street is the 
Church of Saint Olave, which Dickens describes as 
St. Ghastly Grim. 

One of my best-beloved churchyards I call 
the churchyard of Saint Ghastly Grim ; touching 
what men in general call it, I have no information. 
It lies at the heart of the City. It is a small, 
small churchyard, with a ferocious strong spiked 
iron gate, like a gaol. This gate is ornamented 
with skulls and cross-bones, larger than the life, 
wrought in stone ; but it likewise came into the 
mind of Saint Ghastly Grim that to stick iron 
spikes a-top of the stone skulls, as though they 
were impaled, would be a pleasant device. 
Therefore the skulls grin aloft horribly, thrust 
through and through with iron spears. Hence, 



A CITY ROUNDABOUT 227 

there is attraction of repulsion for me in Saint 

Ghastly Grim, and, having often contemplated it 

in the daylight and the dark, I once felt drawn 

towards it in a thunder-storm at midnight. 

Crutched Friars and Coopers' Row lead us by 

Trinity House on to Tower Hill. It was at " the 

garden up by the Trinity House on Tower Hill " 

that the chariot of Bella Wilfer halted, while Pa 

bought himself " the most beautiful suit of clothes, 

the most beautiful hat, and the most beautiful pair 

of bright boots " for the purpose of their " innocent 

elopement " to Greenwich. 

On Tower Hill, Quilp resided, " and, in her bower 
on Tower Hill, Mrs. Quilp was left to pine the absence 
of her lord when he quitted her on business/' No. 2 
Tower Hill, recently demolished, is said to have been 
the house in question. At the corner of Minories, 
No. i Tower Hill, formerly stood " The Crooked 
Billet " mentioned in Barnaby Rudge as the head- 
quarters of the recruiting sergeant from whom Joe 
Willet took the King's Shilling. A recruiting office 
used to stand in King Street opposite. 

In the Tower of London " in a dreary room whose 
thick stone walls shut out the hum of life, and made 
a stillness which the records left by former prisoners 
with those silent witnesses seemed to deepen and 
intensify, remorseful for every act that had been 
done by every man among the cruel crowd," Lord 
George Gordon was imprisoned, as described in 
Barnaby Rudge. 

David Copperfield tells us that as a boy he used 
to meet " the orfling " on London Bridge, there to 
tell her " some astonishing fictions respecting the 
wharves and the Tower, of which I can say no more 
than that I hope I believed them myself." And in 
the same book, when up in London with his aunt, 
we hear of him varying " the legal character of these 
proceedings by going to see ... the Tower of 
London." 



228 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

Leaving Tower Hill and bearing to the left by the 
Tower Moat we turn to the right by the docks and 
wharves along Lower Thames Street, known in 
Dickens's day simply as Thames Street. The 
vintner, whose account Joe Willet had to settle on 
his visit to London, had his place of business " down 
some deep cellars hard by Thames Street." And it 
may have been to the same vintner's that Simon 
Tappertit was going with the " complicated piece of 
ironmongery " which was " going to be fitted on a 
ware-us door in Thames Street " when he stopped 
in the Temple to speak with Sir John Chester, who 
requested him to remove the offending oily smelling 
lock outside the door. Along Thames Street " down 
by the Monument and by the Tower " came Mor- 
timer Lightwood and Eugene Wrayburn in Our 
Mutual Friend in search of news of the vanished 
John Harmon. 

On our left is the Custom House where the late 
Mr. Bardell was employed ; also where, in the con- 
cluding chapter of Bleak House, we read that Peepy 
had a position " and doing extremely well/' 

David Copperfield on his return to London from his 
long tour abroad, after the death of Dora, "landed in 
London on a wintry autumn evening'' and "walked 
from the Custom House to the Monument " before 
he could find a coach to take him to Gray's Inn. 
In Great Expectations we read that Pip always left 
his boat " at a wharf near the Custom House, to be 
brought up afterwards to the Temple Stairs." This 
was part of the scheme for getting Magwitch out of 
the country, and as he explains " it served to make 
me and my boat a commoner incident among the 
waterside people there." 

Somewhere in this neighbourhood, between the 
Custom House and London Bridge, must have existed 
Spigwiffin's Wharf, where Ralph Nickleby found 
house room for Mrs. Nickleby and Kate. Mrs. 



A CITY ROUNDABOUT 229 

Nickleby explained that the way to the house was 
"all down Newgate Street, all down Cheapside, all 
up Lombard Street, down Gracechurch Street, and 
along Thames Street, as far as Spigwiffin's Wharf. 
Oh ! it's a mile." 

Here is the description of the place when Newman 
Noggs first introduced them to it. 

They went into the City, turning down by the 
river side ; and, after a long and very slow drive 
. . . stopped in front of a large old dingy house 
in Thames Street, the door and windows of 
which were so bespattered with mud that it 
would have appeared to have been uninhabited 
for years. . . . Old, and gloomy, and black, in 
truth it was, and sullen and dark were the rooms, 
once so bustling with life and enterprise. There 
was a wharf behind, opening on the Thames. 
An empty dog-kennel, some bones of animals, 
fragments of iron hoops and staves of old casks, 
lay strewn about, but no life was stirring there. 
It was a picture of cold, silent decay. 
Here also was placed Mrs. Clennam's house, thus 
described, when visited by Arthur Clennam on his 
return to England : 

He crossed by Saint Paul's and went down, at 
a long angle, almost to the water's edge, through 
some of the crooked and descending streets which 
lie (and lay more crookedly and closely then) 
between the river and Cheapside. Passing, now 
the mouldy hall of some obsolete Worshipful 
Company, now the illuminated windows of a 
Congregationless Church, passing silent ware- 
houses and wharves, and here and there a narrow 
alley leading to the river, he came at last to the 
house he sought. An old brick house, so dingy 
as to be all but black, standing by itself within 
a gateway. Before it, a square court-yard where 
a shrub or two and a patch of grass were as rank 



230 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

(which is saying much) as the iron railings enclos- 
ing them were rusty ; behind it, a jumble of roofs. 
It was a double house, with long, narrow, heavily 
framed windows. Many years ago it had had 
it in its mind to slide down sideways ; it had been 
propped up, however, and was leaning on some 
half-dozen gigantic crutches : which gymnasium 
for the neighbouring cats, weather-stained, smoke- 
blackened, and overgrown with weeds, appeared 
in these latter days to be no very sure reliance. 
It was at one of the wharves in Thames Street 
that poor Florence, after having been robbed of her 
clothes by " good Mrs. Brown," was discovered by 
Walter Gay. 

Passing Billingsgate and the Monument (Route 
Seven), we reach the foot of London Bridge, where 
we turn to the right and then to the left for Cannon 
Street, where, according to Mr. Jinkins, was a rival 
of Todgers's ; but, he declared, he would stick to 
Todgers's until " the Cannon Street establishment 
shall be able to produce such a combination of wit 
and beauty as has graced that board that day and 
shall be able to serve up such a dinner as that of 
which they had just partaken." 

The first to the left out of Gracechurch Street 
is Lombard Street. The office of Barbox Brothers 
was in a " dim den up in a corner of a court off 
Lombard Street," and here was the banking estab- 
lishment of Giles, Jeremie & Giles, of No Thorough- 
fare. The Poor Relation used to take little Frank 
to walk in Lombard Street, on account of the " great 
riches there," and in the City of the Absent (Uncom- 
mercial Traveller) Dickens tells us : 

Pausing in the alleys behind the closed banks 
of mighty Lombard Street, it gives one as good as 
a rich feeling to think of the broad counters with 
a rim along the edge, made for telling money out 
on, the scales for weighing precious metals, the 



A CITY ROUNDABOUT 231 

ponderous ledgers, and, above all, the bright 
copper shovels for shovelling gold. 
In Little Dorrit we have a splendid account of a 
visit to Lombard Street by Mr. Dorrit and Mr. 
Merdle. 

It was a rapturous dream to Mr. Dorrit to 
find himself set aloft in this public car of triumph, 
making a magnificent progress to that befitting 
destination, the golden Street of the Lombards. 
There, Mr. Merdle insisted on alighting and going 
his way afoot, and leaving his poor equipage at 
Mr. Dorrit's disposition. So, the dream increased 
in rapture when Mr. Dorrit came out of the bank 
alone, and people looked at him in default of 
Mr. Merdle, and when, with the ears of his mind, 
he heard the frequent exclamation as he rolled 
glibly along, " A wonderful man to be Mr. 
Merdle's friend ! " 

On the right of Lombard Street is George Yard, at 
the bottom ^of which is the George and Vulture, 
where 

Mr. Pickwick and Sam took up their present 
abode in very good, old-fashioned, and comfort- 
able quarters ; to wit, the George and Vulture 
Tavern, George Yard, Lombard Street. 
A few days later when at Dingley Dell, Bob 
Sawyer asked Mr. Pickwick to visit him and said : 
" I say, old boy, where do you hang out ? " 
Mr. Pickwick replied that he was at present 
suspended at the George and Vulture/' 
At No. i Lombard Street, was the banking house 
of Smith, Payne & Smith. Their successors, the 
Union of London & Smiths Bank, now occupy the 
premises, which have been rebuilt. It is referred to 
in Pickwick when the elder Weller was handed 
" a cheque on Smith, Payne & Smith, for five hundred 
and thirty pounds, that being the sum of money 
to which Mr. Weller, at the market price of the day, 



232 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

was entitled, in consideration of the balance ef the 
second Mrs. Weller 's funded savings." 

Mr. Weller was at first obstinately determined 
on cashing the cheque in nothing but sovereigns : 
but, it being represented by the umpires that by 
so doing he must incur the expense of a small 
sack to carry them home in, he consented to 
receive the amount in five-pound notes. 

" My son," said Mr. Weller as they came out 
of the banking-house, " my son and me has a 
wery particular engagement this arternoon, and 
I should like to have this here bis'ness settled out 
of hand, so let's jest go straight avay someveres, 
vere ve can hordit the accounts." 

A quiet room was soon found, and the accounts 
were produced and audited. 

At No. 2 Lombard Street was the bank where 
George Beadnell resided, with whose daughter, 
Maria, Dickens, as a youth, fell madly in love. His 
friend, Henry Kolle, was engaged to one of Maria's 
sisters and Dickens used to get him to smuggle 
letters into the house. Of this, Forster tells us : 

He, too, had his Dora, at apparently the same 
hopeless elevation ; striven for as the one only 
thing to be attained, and even more unattain- 
able, for neither did he succeed nor happily did 
she die ; but the one idol, like the other, supply- 
ing a motive to exertion for the time, and other- 
wise opening out to the idolater, both in face and 
fiction, a highly unsubstantial, happy, foolish 
time. I used to laugh and tell him I had no 
belief in any but the book Dora, until the incident 
of a sudden reappearance of the real one in his 
life, nearly six years after Copperfield was written, 
convinced me there had been a more actual 
foundation for those chapters of his book than 
I was ready to suppose. Still I would hardly 
admit it ; and, that the matter could possibly 



A CITY ROUNDABOUT 233 

affect him then, persisted in a stout refusal to 
believe. His reply (1855) throws a little light 
on this juvenile part of his career, and I therefore 
venture to preserve it. 

" I don't quite apprehend what you mean by 
my overrating the strength of the feeling of 
five-and-twenty years ago. If you mean of my 
own feeling, and will only think what the desper- 
ate intensity of my nature is, and that this began 
when I was Charley's age ; that it excluded every 
other idea from my mind for four years, at a 
time of life when four years are equal to four 
times four ; and that I went at it with a deter- 
mination to overcome all the difficulties, which 
fairly lifted me up into that newspaper life, and 
floated me away over a hundred men's heads : 
then you are wrong, because nothing can exag- 
gerate that. I have positively stood amazed at 
myself ever since ! And so I suffered, and so 
worked, and so beat and hammered away at the 
maddest romances that ever got into any boy's 
head and stayed there, that to see the mere cause 
of it all, now, loosens my hold upon myself. 
Without for a moment sincerely believing that it 
would have been better if we had never got 
separated, I cannot see the occasion of so much 
emotion as I should see anyone else. No one 
can imagine in the most distant degree what 
pain the recollection gave me in Copperfield. 
And, just as I can never open that book as I open 
any other book, I cannot see the face (even at 
four-and-forty) or hear the voice, without going 
wandering away over the ashes of all that youth 
and hope in the wildest manner." 



ITINERARY AND REFERENCES 
ROUTE FOURTEEN 

THE BANK TO THE TOWER AND RETURN 



Cornhill 

Carol 

Pickwick, 20 
Barnaby, I, 67 
Uncommercial, g 
Repnnted, Bill-sticking 
Chuzzlewit, 38 
Golden Mary 

Change Alley (site of Garra way's) 

Pickwick, 34 
Chuzzlewit, 27 
Domt, I, 29 
Expectations, 22 
Uncommercial, 21 
Poor Relation 

Cowper's Court (site of the 
Jerusalem Coffee House) 

Dorrit, I, 29 

Freeman's Court (site) 
Pickwick, 1 8, 20 

Sun Court 

Pickwick, 31 

Bishopsgate Street 

Dombey, 9 
Barnaby, 77 
Nickleby, 2 
Sketches : Mr. Minns 

Threadneedle Street 

Nickleby, 35, 37 
Sketches : Tales, 2 
Dr. Marigold 

City Square (site) 
Nickleby, 35, 37 

St. Peter's Church, Cornhill 
Mutual, It, 15 



Leadenhall Market 
Pickwick, 33 
Dombey, 39, 56 
Nickleby, 40 
Reprinted : Bill-sticking 

Leadenhall Street 

Dombey, 4, 13 
Barnaby, 37 
Golden Mary 
Mutual, II, 15 

India House (site) 
Dombey, 4 
Uncommercial, 3 
Gone Astray 

St. Mary Axe 

Mutual II, 5 ; III, 16 

Bevls Marks 

Curiosity, n, 33, 37 

Houndsdltch 

Curiosity, 37 

Duke's Place 

Curiosity, 33 

Fenchurch Street 

Mutual, II, 8 

Mincing Lane 

Mutual, II, 8 ; III, 16 
Uncommercial, 9 

Great Tower Street 
No Thoroughfare, 5 
Barnaby, 3 1 
Uncommercial, 9 

Mark Lane 

Uncommercial, 9, 21 



234 



A CITY ROUNDABOUT 



235 



Hart Street 

(St. Olave's Church) 
Uncommercial, 21 

Trinity House 

Mutual, II, 8 

Tower Hill 

Curiosity, 4, 49 
Barnaby, 31 
Mutual, II, 8 

Tower Stairs 
Barnaby, 51 

The Mint 

Chuzzlewit, 21, 37 
Barnaby, 67 

The Tower 

Copperfield, n, 33 
Expectations, 54 
Barnaby, 51, 73, 67 
Mutual, I, 3 
Chuzzlewit, 9 
Uncommercial 31 

Thames Street 

Barnaby, 13, 24 
Dornt, I, 3 
Nickleby, n, 26 
Mutual, I, 3 
Dombey, 6 

Custom House 

Pickwick, 34 
Copperfield, 59 



Bleak House, 67 
Dombey, 60 
Expectations, 47 
Dorrit, I, 29 
Mutual, 4 

Billingsgate 

Dornt, I, 7 
Expectations, 54 
Uncommercial, 13 

Rood Lane 

Uncommercial, 9 
Miscell. P. : Booley 

Cannon Street 
Chuzzlewit, 9 

Gracechurch Street 

Reprinted : Bill-sticking 
Uncommercial, 21 
Nickleby, 26 

Lombard Street 
Life 

Pickwick, 55 
Dorrit, II, 16 
Uncommercial, 21 
No Thoroughfare 
Mugby Junction 
Poor Relation 
Chuzzlewit, 27 
Nickleby, 26 

George Yard 

(George and Vulture) 
Pickwick, 26, 30, 33 



ROUTE FIFTEEN 
EASTWARD, UNCOMMERCIALLY 
(ALDGATE TO LIMEHOUSE) 

THE East End of London was by no means neglected 
by Dickens. His early visits to his uncle in Lime- 
house doubtless afforded him material for the 
descriptions of the Docks and the River generally 
in Dombey and Son and Great Expectations, and whilst 
writing Edwin Drood he paid more than one visit to 
the opium dens in Shadwell. The Pickwickians set 
off for Ipswich from the Bull Inn in Whitechapel, 
and David Copperfield on his first visit to London 
arrived at the " Blue Boar " there. Young Joe 
Willet, up to pay the vintner, had his meals arranged 
for at the " Black Lion " ; so here at least are a 
variety of hostelries in the great eastern thorough- 
fare whose names have been handed down to 
immortality through their connection with Dickens. 
However it is from his walks described in the 
Uncommercial Traveller papers that the personal 
connection of the East End with Dickens is best 
obtained, as our references throughout this ramble 
will amply illustrate. Let us commence with the 
third paper of the series, his first on this district. 
My day's no-business beckoning me to the East 
End of London, I had turned my face to that 
point of the metropolitan compass on leaving 
Covent Garden, and had got past the India 
House, thinking in my idle manner of Tippoo 
Sahib and Charles Lamb, and had got past my 
little wooden midshipman, after affectionately 
patting him on one leg of his knee-shorts for 
old acquaintance' sake, and had got past Aldgate 
Pump, and had got past the Saracen's Head 
236 



EASTWARD UNCOMMERCIALLY 237 

(with an ignominious rash of posting-bills dis- 
figuring his swarthy countenance), and had 
strolled up the empty yard of his ancient neigh- 
bour, the Black or Blue Boar, or Bull, who 
departed this life I don't know when, and whose 
coaches are all gone I don't know where. 
Our starting point is Aldgate Pump, at the 
junction of Fenchurch Street with Leadenhall Street, 
thus making a continuation of Route Two. 

In one of his early Boz Sketches Dickens refers to 
shabby gentility being " as purely local as ... the 
pump at Aldgate." 

In Dombey and Son, after the return of Walter, when 
Toots could not bear to see the happiness of Florence 
and him, we read, " Well might Mr, Toots leave the 
little company that evening ... to take a little 
turn to Aldgate Pump and back " ; and the mad old 
man who lived next door to the Nicklebys at Bow 
referred to " the statue at Charing Cross having 
been lately seen on the Stock Exchange at midnight 
walking arm in arm with the Pump from Aldgate, 
in a riding habit." 

Of Aldgate itself Mr. Blotton (of the Pickwick 
Club) was a worthy inhabitant, and in Barnaby 
Rudge we read of the initiation to the secret society 
of the Prentice Knights of " Mark Gilbert bound to 
Thomas Curzon, Hosier, Golden Fleece, Aldgate." 

Saracen's Head Yard, at No. 92 Fenchurch Street, 
nearly opposite the Pump, marks the site of the inn 
referred to above, and the " Little Wooden Midship- 
man " which was formerly in Leadenhall Street 
(see Route Fourteen) is now to be seen at No. 156 
Minories, opposite Houndsditch Church. 

America Square, which turns out of John Street 
on the right of Minories, is referred to in A Message 
from the Sea, as the place of business of Dringworth 
Brothers. 

St. Botolph Church at the corner of Houndsditch 
(see Route Fourteen), where Cruncher "received the 



238 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

added appellation of Jerry/' was to Dickens the 
dividing line between East and West, for we read 
in The Uncommercial Traveller : 

A single stride at Houndsditch Church . . . 
a single stride, and everything is entirely changed 
in grain and character. West of the stride, a 
table, or a chest of drawers, on sale shall be of 
mahogany and French-polished ; East of the 
stride, it shall be of deal, smeared with a cheap 
counterfeit resembling lip-salve. West of the 
stride, a penny loaf or bun shall be compact and 
self-contained ; East of the stride, it shall be of 
a sprawling and splay-footed character, as seek- 
ing to make more of itself for the money. 
The Bull Inn stood on the spot now occupied by 
Aldgate Avenue until 1868. " I shall work down to 
Ipswich the day arter to-morrow, sir/' said Mr. 
Weller the elder, " from the Bull in Whitechapel ; 
and, if you really mean to go, you'd better go with 
me." Which advice Mr. Pickwick took, and " away 
went the coach up Whitechapel, to the admiration 
of the whole population of that pretty densely 
populated quarter." 

Near to the " Bull " was the " Blue Boar," at 
which young David Copperfield arrived from 
Blunderstone en route for Salem House. " I forget," 
he says, " whether it was the ' Blue Bull ' or the 
' Blue Boar/ but I know it was the Blue something, 
and that its likeness was painted up on the back of 
the coach." The effigy of the " Blue Boar " is re- 
tained by the tobacco factory at No. 31 Aldgate 
High Street, on the left-hand side. 

Commercial Road, a little further along on the 
right, reminds us that, " on a dead wall in the Com- 
mercial^ Road," Captain Cuttle bought the " ballad 
of considerable antiquity . . . which set forth the 
courtship and nuptials of a promising young coal- 
whipper with a certain ' lovely Peg/ " 
In The Uncommercial Traveller we read : 



EASTWARD UNCOMMERCIALLY 239 

I had come out again into the age of railways, 
and I had got past Whitechapel Church, and was 
rather inappropriately for an Uncommercial 
Traveller in the Commercial Road. Pleasantly 
wallowing in the abundant mud of that thorough- 
fare, and greatly enjoying the huge piles of 
building belonging to the sugar refiners, the little 
masts and vanes in small back gardens in back 
streets, the neighbouring canals and docks, the 
India vans lumbering along their stone tramway, 
and the pawnbrokers' shops where hard-up Mates 
had pawned so many sextants and quadrants, 
that I should have bought a few cheap if I had 
the least notion how to use them. 
This entrance to Commercial Road did not exist, 
in Dickens's day ; it was then reached by Church 
Lane a little further on, past Whitechapel Church, 
which accounts for Dickens's description above. 
Again, in the same series, he tells us : 

My beat lying round by Whitechapel Church, 
and the adjacent sugar-refineries great build- 
ings, tier upon tier, that have the appearance of 
being nearly related to the dock warehouses at 
Liverpool. 

Our route takes us along the road to the left, 
opposite Commercial Road, called Commercial Street. 
The route followed will bring us out again in the 
Whitechapel Road, half a mile further on. 

On a July morning of this summer, I walked 
towards Commercial Street (not Uncommercial 
Street), Whitechapel. ... I had been attracted 
by the following handbill printed on rose- 
coloured paper : Self-Supporting Cooking Depot 
for the Working Classes, Commercial Street, 
Whitechapel, where accommodation is provided 
for dining comfortably 300 persons at a time. 
Open from 7 a.m. till 7 p.m. 
The building referred to, a house of refreshment no 
longer, stands at the corner of Flower and Dean 



240 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

Street, the third street on the right. Here it was 
Dickens sampled the excellent fare provided at a cost 
of 4|d., and, as he says, " I dined at my club in Pall 
Mall a few days afterwards for exactly twelve times 
the money and not half so well." 

Continuing along Commercial Street, we take the 
fourth on the right, Hanbury Street. This presently 
crosses Brick Lane. At No. 160 is a Mission Hall, 
undoubtedly the original of the famous one in 
Pickwick. 

The monthly meetings of the Brick Lane 
Branch of the United Grand Junction Ebenezer 
Temperance Association were held in a large 
room, pleasantly and airily situated at the top 
of a safe and commodious ladder. . . . Previous 
to the commencement of business, the ladies sat 
upon forms, and drank tea, till such time as they 
considered it expedient to leave off ; and a large 
wooden money-box was conspicuously placed 
upon the green baize cloth of the business table, 
behind which the secretary stood, and acknow- 
ledged, with a gracious smile, every addition to the 
rich vein of copper which lay concealed within. 
But the Mission Hall in Brick Lane has not been 
allowed to pass unchallenged as the place of meeting 
of the famous Brick Lane Branch. Christchurch 
Hall, in Hanbury Street, which is decorated with 
windows illustrating scenes from the novels, claims 
for itself the distinction of being the Mission Hall 
mentioned. 

Continuing along Hanbury Street, we reach 
Vallence Road, where, turning to the left, we find 
on the right Whitechapel Workhouse, the subject 
of a deeply sympathetic paper entitled "A Nightly 
Scene in London " in Miscellaneous Papers. 

Returning, Vallence Road leads us into White- 
chapel Road about half a mile further on from the 
spot where we turned off into Commercial Street. 
We turn to the left for the Mile End Road and Bow. 



EASTWARD UNCOMMERCIALLY 241 

If, however, instead of returning into the Whitechapel 
Road, we proceeded to the other end of Commercial 
Street, we should reach Shoreditch, of which we read, 
in Oliver Twist, that Sikes and Oliver, en route for 
the burglary at Chertsey, " threaded the streets 
between Shoreditch and Smithfield." 

Nearly opposite Shoreditch Church is what was 
formerly the Standard Theatre, to which reference 
is made in " Amusements of the People/' Miscel- 
laneous Papers. Behind this theatre is Hoxton 
Street, in which is situated the Britannia Theatre, 
which received the praise of Dickens for its great work, 
particularly for its religious services on a Sunday. 

This really extraordinary place is the achieve- 
ment of one man's enterprise, and was erected 
on the ruins of an inconvenient old building in 
less than five months, at a round cost of five-and- 
twenty thousand pounds. To dismiss this part 
of my subject, and still to render to the proprietor 
the credit that is strictly his due, I must add that 
his sense of the responsibility upon him to make 
the best of his audience, and to do his best for 
them, is a highly agreeable sign of these times. 
To the right of Shoreditch High Street runs Beth- 
nal Green Road, also traversed by Oliver on the way 
to the burglary, when we read : *" By the time they 
had turned into the Bethnal Green Road, the day 
had fairly begun to break." 

At the eastern end of this is Bethnal Green, whither 
Eugene and Mortimer lured the schoolmaster in 
Our Mutual Friend. " There is a rather difficult 
country about Bethnal Green/' said Eugene. " And 
we have not taken in that direction lately. What is 
your opinion of Bethnal Green ? " Mortimer assented 
to Bethnal Green and they turned eastward. " 

Returning to Whitechapel Road by way of Val- 
lence Road described above, we turn to the left on 
reaching the main road. On the right is the London 

Q 



242 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

Hospital, where, " in the open street just opposite the 
Hospital," Brass informed Dick Swiveller : " Sally 
found you a second-hand stool, sir, yesterday evening. 
She's a rare fellow at a bargain. ..." 

In Barnaby Rudge we find several references to 

Whitechapel. In the early chapters we are informed : 

At that time ... a very large part of what is 

London now had no existence. Even in the 

brains of the oldest speculators there had sprung 

up no long rows of streets connecting Highgate 

with Whitechapel ; 

and later Lord George Gordon, after leaving the 
" Maypole," rode " the whole length of Whitechapel, 
Leadenhall Street, Cheapside into St. Paul's Church- 
yard"; and at the Black Lion Inn whose yard is 
still to be seen at No. 75 Whitechapel Road Joe 
Willet had his meals ordered for him and was 
recommended by his father not to score up too 
large a bill there, much to Joe's annoyance. 

Of Whitechapel we have an amusing account in 
Pickwick : 

" Not a wery nice neighbourhood this, sir," 
said Sam . . . 

" It is not indeed, Sam," replied Mr. Pickwick, 
surveying the crowded and filthy street through 
which they were passing. 

" It's a wery remarkable circumstance, sir," 
said Sam, " that poverty and oysters always 
seems to go together." 

" I don't understand you, Sam," said Mr 
Pickwick. 

"What I mean, sir," said Sam, "is that, the 
poorer a place is, the greater call there seems to 
be for oysters. Look here, sir ; here's a oyster 
stall to every half-dozen houses the street's 
lined vith 'em. Blessed if I don't think that 
ven a man's wery poor he rushes out of his 
lodgings and eats oysters in reg'lar desperation." 
Just beyond Whitechapel Station we reach Mile 



EASTWARD UNCOMMERCIALLY 243 

End Gate but the gate itself has long since dis- 
appeared ; although the Gate House stood until 
a later date. On the journey of the Pickwickians 
to Ipswich we read : 

By this time they had reached the turnpike 
at Mile End ; a profound silence prevailed until 
they had got two or three miles further on, when 
Mr. Weller senior, turning suddenly to Mr. Pick- 
wick said : 

" Wery queer life is a pikekeeper'-s, sir. . . . 
They're all on 'em men as has met vith some 
disappointment in life. . . . Consequence of vich, 
they retires from the world, and shuts themselves 
up in pikes ; partly with the view of being 
solitary, and partly to rewenge themselves on 
mankind by takin' tolls/' 

The road now becomes the Mile End Road referred 
to thus quaintly by old Sol Gills in Dombey and Son. 
Not being like the savages who came on Robin- 
son Crusoe's island, we can't live on a man who 
asks for change for a sovereign, and a woman who 
enquires the way to Mile End Turnpike. 
In Bleak House, we read of Mrs. Jellyby " having 
gone to Mile End directly after breakfast, on some 
Borrioboolan business " ; and, during the Riots, in 
Barnaby Rudge, the party from Chigwell, on coming 
to Mile End, " passed a house the master of which, 
a Catholic gentleman of small means, having hired 
a wagon to remove his furniture by midnight, had 
it all brought down into the street to wait the 
vehicle's arrival, and save time in packing." 

On the left we find first the Trinity Almshouses, 
then the Vintners' Almshouses ; this latter no doubt 
the original of TitbulTs Almshouses in The Uncom- 
mercial Traveller. 

TitbulTs Almshouses are in the east of 
London, in a great highway, in a poor, busy and 
thronged neighbourhood. Old iron and fried 
fish, cough drops and artificial flowers, boiled 



244 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

pigs'-feet and household furniture that looks as 
if it were polished up with lip-salve, umbrellas 
full of vocal literature and saucers full of shell- 
fish in a green juice which I hope is natural to 
them when their health is good, garnish the 
paved sideways as you go to Titbull's. I take 
the ground to have risen in those parts since 
Titbuirs time, and you drop into his domain 
by three stone steps. So did I first drop into it, 
very nearly striking my brows against Titbull's 
pump, which stands with its back to the thorough- 
fare just inside the gate, and has a conceited 
air of reviewing Titbull's pensioners. 
On the right of Mile End Road is Stepney Green, 
to which Silas Wegg referred when he asked, " Would 
Stepney Fields be considered intrusive ? If not 
remote enough, I can go remoter." 

The Mile End Road continues as Bow Road and 
leads to Bow, which was " quite a rustic place to 
Tim Linkinwater." 

The " little cottage at Bow," let to the Nicklebys 
at a very low rental by the kind-hearted Cheeryble 
Brothers, was no doubt situated near the present 
Grove Hall Park off the Fairfield Road by Bow 
Station : the park is on the site of Grove Hall 
Asylum in which the " gentleman next door " was 
doubtless an inmate. 

If we now return along the Bow Road to Mile 
End Station we can get a bus through Burdett Road 
into West India Dock Road and along the docks. 
Somewhere in the region of the West India Docks 
must have been Brig Place, where Captain Cuttle 
lodged with Mrs. MacStinger at Number 9. 

Captain Cuttle lived on the brink of a little 
canal near the India Docks, where there was a 
swivel bridge which opened now and then to let 
some wandering monster of a ship come roaming 
up the street like a stranded leviathan. The 
gradual change from land to water, on the 



EASTWARD UNCOMMERCIALLY 245 

approach to Captain Cuttle's lodgings, was 
curious. It began with the erection of flag- 
staffs, as appurtenances to public-houses ; then 
came slopsellers' shops, with Guernsey shirts, 
sou'-wester hats, and canvas pantaloons, at once 
the tightest and the loosest of their order, hang- 
ing up outside. These were succeeded by anchor 
and chain-cable forges, where sledge-hammers 
were dinging upon iron all day long. Then 
came rows of houses, with little vane-3urmounted 
masts uprearing themselves from among the 
scarlet beans. Then ditches. Then pollard 
willows. Then more ditches. Then unaccount- 
able patches of dirty water, hardly to be descried, 
for the ships that covered them. Then the air 
was perfumed with chips ; and all other trades 
were swallowed up in mast, oar, and block- 
making, and boat-building. Then the ground 
grew marshy and unsettled. Then there was 
nothing to be smelt but rum and sugar. Then 
Captain Cuttle's lodgings at once a first floor and 
a top storey, in Brig Place were close before you. 
The river beyond West India Docks leads to 
Greenwich. (Route Eight.) " The house with the 
low window being by the river side down the pool 
then between Limehouse and Greenwich," at which 
the convict Magwich was temporarily lodged by 
Pip and Herbert in Great Expectations, has not been 
identified : we should search in vain for either the Old 
Green Copper Rope- Walk, or Chink's Basin, or Mill 
Pond Bank, although the latter is described as follows: 
It was a fresh kind of place, all circumstances 
considered, where the wind from the river had 
room to turn itself round ; and there were two 
or three trees in it, and there was the stump of a 
ruined windmill, and there was the Old Green 
Copper Rope-Walk, whose long and narrow 
vista I could trace in the moonlight, along a series 
of wooden frames set in the ground, that looked 



246 THE LONDON OF DICKERS 

like superannuated haymaking-rakes which had 
grown old and lost most of their teeth. 

Selecting from the few queer houses upon Mill 
Pond Bank a house with a wooden front and 
three stories of bow-window (not bay-window, 
which is another thing) I looked at the plate upon 
the door, and read there Mrs. Whimple. 
We are now in the Borough of Poplar, where lived 
William Ravender (Wreck of the Golden Mary). 

When I am ashore, I live in my house at 
Poplar. My house at Poplar is taken care of 
and kept shipshape by an old lady who was my 
mother's maid before I was born. 
Returning along West India Dock Road we find, 
on our left, Limehouse Church, where " Miss Abbey 
Potterson, of the ' Six Jolly Fellowship Porters/ had 
been christened some sixty and odd years before/' 

John Harmon described this as the spot where he 
waited for his assailant. 

I disembarked with my valise in my hand as 
Potterson the steward, and Mr. Jacob Kibble, my 
fellow-passenger, afterwards remembered and 
waited for him in the dark by that very Lime- 
house Church which is now behind me. 
Of a visit to a lead mills " close to Limehouse 
Church/' Dickens devotes a chapter of the Uncom- 
mercial Traveller, under the title of " On an Amateur 
Beat/' 

The next turning past the church on the left is 
Church Row. Here at No. 12 lived Christopher 
Huff am, a " rigger in His Majesty's Navy," god- 
father to Dickens, whose full name was Charles 
John Huffham Dickens (Huffham incorrectly so 
spelled in the church register) . 

Church Row leads into Ropemakers' Fields and 
the river : bearing to the right we are in the river- 
side street called Narrow Street, where the Grapes 
Inn, at No. 76, is said to be the original of " The Six 
Jolly Fellowship Porters " of Our Mutual Friend : 



EASTWARD UNCOMMERCIALLY 247 

A red-curtained tavern, that stood dropsically 
bulging over the causeway. . . . 

In its whole constitution it had not a straight 
floor, and hardly a straight line ; but it had out- 
lasted, and clearly would yet outlast, many a 
better-trimmed building, many a sprucer public- 
house. Externally, it was a narrow lopsided 
wooden jumble of corpulent windows heaped 
one upon another as you might heap as many 
toppling oranges, with a crazy wooden verandah 
impending over the water ; indeed the whole 
house, inclusive of the complaining flag-staff on 
the roof, impended over the water, but seemed 
to have got into the condition of a faint-hearted 
diver who has paused so long on the brink that 
he will never go in at all. . . . 

The bar of the " Six Jolly Fellowship Porters " 
was a bar to soften the human breast. The avail- 
able space in it was not much larger than a 
hackney coach ; but no one could have wished 
the bar bigger, that space was so girt in by 
corpulent little casks, and by cordial-bottles 
radiant with fictitious grapes in bunches, and by 
lemons in nets, and by biscuits in baskets, and 
by the polite beer-pulls that made low bows 
when customers were served with beer, and by 
the cheese in a snug corner, and by the landlady's 
own small table in a snugger corner near the fire, 
with the cloth everlastingly laid. This haven 
was divided from the rough world by a glass 
partition and a half -door with a leaden sill upon 
it for the convenience of resting your liquor. 
For the rest, both the tap and parlour of the 
" Six Jolly Fellowship Porters " gave upon the 
river, and had red curtains matching the noses 
of the regular customers. 

Round about here must have lived Rogue Rider- 
hood, who " dwelt deep and dark in Limehouse Hole, 
among the riggers, and the mast, oar and block 



248 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

makers, and the boat-builders, and the sail-lofts. . . . 
It was a wretched little shop, with a roof that any 
man standing in it could touch with his hand ; 
little better than a cellar or cave, down three steps." 
The home of Lizzie Hexam was also in this 
neighbourhood : 

" By the docks ; down by Ratcliff . . 
down by where accumulated scum of humanity 
seemed to be washed from higher grounds/' 
It was, we read, a low building which " had the 
look of having been once a mill. There was a 
rotten wart of wood upon its forehead which 
seemed to indicate where the sails had been." 
At the end of Narrow Street the road turns right, 
and then left into Broad Street. 

In Glamis Road to the right is the fairly modern 
building of the East London Hospital for children, 
which has grown from the tiny place at Ratcliff 
Cross, visited and described by Dickens in a paper 
entitled " The Small Star in the East/' 

Down by the river's bank in Ratcliff, I was 
turning upward by a side-street, therefore, to 
regain the railway, when my eyes rested on the 
inscription across the road, " East London 
Children's Hospital." I could scarcely have seen 
an inscription better suited to my frame of mind ; 
and I went across and went straight in. 

I found the children's hospital established in an 
old sail-loft or storehouse, of the roughest nature, 
and on the simplest means. There were trap-doors 
in the floors, where goods had been hoisted up 
and down ; heavy feet and heavy weights had 
started every knot in the well-trodden plank- 
ing ; inconvenient bulks and beams and awkward 
staircases perplexed my passage through the 
wards. But I found it airy, sweet, and clean. 
We return to High Street, Shadwell, the region of 
the opium den of Edwin Drood, whither came John 
Jasper. " Eastward and still eastward through the 



EASTWARD UNCOMMERCIALLY 249 

stale streets he takes his way, until he reaches his 
destination, a miserable court, specially miserable 
among many such." 

Dickens paid a visit to an opium den in Shadwell, 
in company with his American friend, J. T. Fields, 
and then wrote, a month before he died : 

The opium smoking I have described, I saw 
(exactly as I have described it, penny ink bottle 
and all) down in Shadwell this last autumn. 
A couple of the Inspectors of Lodging Houses 
knew the woman and took me to her as I was 
making a round with them to see for myself the 
working of Lord Shaftesbury's Bill. 
The den was probably situated in New Court, 
Victoria Street, E., to the right of St. George's Street, 
close to the church, on the site of which a play- 
ground now stands. 

J. T. Fields has thus put the visit on record : 

In a miserable court, at night, we found a hag- 
gard old woman blowing at a kind of pipe made 
of an old ink bottle ; and the words that Dickens 
puts into the mouth of this wretched creature in 
Edwin Drood we heard her croon as we leaned 
over the tattered bed in which she was lying. 
St. George's Street was in Dickens's day known as 
Ratcliff Highway. It is described in Sketches by 
Boz : and Ratcliff is referred to in Oliver Twist 
as a " remote but genteel suburb." 

On our left we pass Old Gravel Lane and reach the 
bridge once called "Mr. Baker's trap " on account 
of the number of suicides taking place here. Dickens 
thus describes his visit : 

Long before I reached Wapping, I gave myself 
up as having lost my way, and, abandoning myself 
to the narrow streets in a Turkish frame of mind, 
relied on predestination to bring me somehow or 
other to the place I wanted if I were ever to get 
there. When I had ceased for an hour or so to 
take any trouble about the matter, I found my- 



250 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

self on a swing-bridge looking down at some dark 
locks in some dirty water. 

Being informed it was called " Mr. Baker's Trap " 
Dickens continues : 

Inspiration suggested to me that Mr. Baker 
was the acting coroner of that neighbourhood. 
" A common place for suicide," said I, looking 
down at the locks. " Sue ? . . . Yes ! And 
Poll. Likewise Emily. And Nancy. And Jane 
. . . and all the biling. Ketches off their 
bonnets or shorls, takes a run, and headers down 
here, they doos. Always a headerin' down here, 
they is. Like one o'clock/' 

This road now takes us through the heart of the 
London Docks, but we look in vain for " Number 
Thirty, Little Gosling Street, London Docks," where 
Mr. F. breathed his last, as described by Flora in 
Little Dorrit. 

This way, we remember, came Mortimer Light- 
wood in search of news of John Harmon. 

The wheels rolled on ... by the Tower, and 
by the Docks ; down by Ratcliff and by 
Rotherhithe : 

and a particularly interesting description of the dis- 
trict is to be found in chapter twenty of The Uncom- 
mercial Traveller, of which an extract is here 
given : 

My road lies through that part of London 
generally known to the initiated as " Down by 
the Docks." Down by the Docks is home to a 
good many people to too many, if I may judge 
from the overflow of local population in the 
streets but my nose insinuates that the number 
to whom it is Sweet Home might be easily 
counted. . . . 

Down by the Docks, they eat the largest oysters 
and scatter the roughest oyster shells known to 
the descendants of Saint George and the Dragon. 
Down by the Docks, they consume the slimiest 



EASTWARD UNCOMMERCIALLY 251 

of shell-fish, which seem to have been scraped 
off the copper bottoms of ships. Down by the 
Docks, the vegetables at greengrocers' doors 
acquire a saline and a scaly look, as if they had 
been crossed with fish and seaweed. Down by 
the Docks, they " board seamen " at the eating- 
houses, the public-houses, the slop-shops, the 
coffee-shops, the tally-shops, all kinds of shops 
mentionable and unmentionable board them, 
as it were, in the piratical sense, making them 
bleed terribly, and giving no quarter. Down by 
the Docks, the seamen roam in mid-street and 
mid-day, their pockets inside-out, and their 
heads no better. Down by the Docks, the 
daughters of wave-ruling Britannia also rove, 
clad in silken attire, with uncovered tresses 
streaming in the breeze, bandana kerchiefs 
floating from their shoulders, and crinoline not 
wanting. . . . Down by the Docks, you may buy 
polonies, saveloys, and sausage preparations 
various, if you are not particular what they are 
made of besides seasoning. Down by the Docks, 
the Children of Israel creep into any gloomy cribs 
and entries they can hire, and hang slops there 
pewter watches, sou'-wester hats, waterproo/ 
overalls" firtht rate articleth, Thjack." Down 
by the Docks, such dealers exhibiting on a 
frame a complete nautical suit without the refine- 
ment of a waxen visage in the hat present the 
imaginary wearer as drooping at the yard-arm, 
with his seafaring and earthfaring troubles over. 
Down by the Docks, the placards in the shops 
apostrophise the customer, knowing him 
familiarly beforehand, as, " Look here, Jack ! " 
" Here's your sort, my lad ! " " Try our sea- 
going mixed, at two and nine ! " " The right 
kit for the British tar 1 " " Ship ahoy ! " 
" Splice the main brace, brother " " Come, 
cheer up, my lads, We've the best liquors here. 



252 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

And you'll find something new In our wonderful 
Beer ! " Down by the Docks, the pawnbroker 
lends money on Union Jack pocket-handker- 
chiefs, on watches with little ships pitching fore 
and aft on the dial, on telescopes, nautical 
instruments in cases, and such-like. Down by 
the Docks, the apothecary sets up in business on 
the wretchedest scale chiefly on lint and plaster 
for the strapping of wounds and with no bright 
bottles, and with no little drawers. Down by 
the Docks, the shabby undertaker's shop will 
bury you for next to nothing, after the Malay 
or Chinaman has stabbed you for nothing at all : 
so you can hardly hope to make a cheaper end. 
Down by the Docks, anybody drunk will quarrel 
with anybody drunk or sober, and everybody 
else will have a hand in it. 

Old Gravel Lane continued straight on leads to 
Wapping, where, in Barnaby Rudge, we read that the 
rioters " were bound for Wapping to destroy a 
chapel." 

Dickens visited the workhouse at Wapping to 

make personal enquiries on an important question. 

I was going to Wapping because an Eastern 

police magistrate had said, through the morning 

papers, that there was no classification at the 

Wapping Workhouse for women, and that it was 

a disgrace and a shame, and divers other hard 

names, and because I wished to see how the fact 

really stood ; 

and on the way he makes a reference to an ancient 
landmark in this neighbourhood, Wapping Old 
Stairs, which is reached by turning to the right 
along High Street at the end of Gravel Lane. 

I at last began to file off to the right, towards 
Wapping. Not that I intended to take boat at 
Wapping Old Stairs, or that I was going to look 
at the locality because I believe (for I don't) 
in the constancy of the young woman who told 



EASTWARD UNCOMMERCIALLY 253 

her sea-going lover, to such a beautiful old tune, 

that she had ever continued the same, since she 

gave him the 'baccer-box marked with his name ; 

I am afraid he usually got the worst of those 

transactions, and was frightfully taken in. 

Further on, on the right, Nightingale Lane takes 

us back again into a continuation of St. George's 

Street called Upper East Smithfield and leading by 

the left to the Tower (Route Fourteen). We turn 

right, and shortly afterwards to the left along Well 

Street, following the footsteps of young Dickens as 

narrated in Gone Astray : 

I must have strayed by that time, as I recall 
my course, into Goodman's Fields, or somewhere 
thereabouts. The picture represented a scene 
in a play then performing at a theatre in that 
neighbourhood which is no longer in existence. 
It stimulated me to go to that theatre and see 
that play. ... I found out the theatre. . . . 
Of its external appearance, I can only remember 
the loyal initials G.R. untidily paintfed in yellow 
ochre on the front. 

The theatre in Goodman's Fields (where Garrick 
made his first London appearance) disappeared in 
1802, so the one Dickens refers to was no doubt that 
in Well Street called The Royalty or East London 
Theatre, burnt down in April, 1826. The site is now 
occupied by a Sailors' Home. 

To the right of Well Street is Wellclose Square, 
where in the same adventure he " found a watchman 
in his box . . . this venerable man took me to the 
nearest watch-house ... a warm and drowsy sort 
of place embellished with great coats and rattles 
hanging up/' 

The other end of Well Street brings us to Cable 

Street, where we turn to the left, and then right, 

along Leman Street. The streets to the left cover 

the site of Goodman's Fields, referred to above. 

At the end of Leman Street we are in Whitechapel 



254 THE LONDON OF DICKENS 

High Street once again and turn left for Aldgate and 
the Bank. 

Thus we end our exploration of the London of 
Dickens. It has taken us into all quarters, for 
Dickens was a great walker. G. A. Sala has des- 
cribed himself encountering Dickens in the oddest 
S'aces and most inclement weather, in Ratcliff 
ighway, on Haverstock Hill, on Camberwell Green, 
in Gray's Inn Lane, in the Wandsworth Road, at 
Hammersmith Broadway, in Norton Folgate, and 
at Kensal New Town. " A hansom whirled you 
by the Bell and Horns at Brompton, and there he 
was striding, as with seven-league boots, seem- 
ingly in the direction of North End, Fulham. The 
Metropolitan Railway sent you forth at Lisson 
Grove, and you met him plodding speedily towards 
the Yorkshire Stingo. He was to be met rapidly 
skirting the grim brick wall of the prison in Coldbath 
Fields, or trudging along the Seven Sisters Road at 
Holloway, or bearing, under a steady press of sail, 
underneath Highgate Archway, or pursuing the 
even tenor of his way up the Vauxhall Bridge Road." 

Wherever there was " matter to be heard and 
learned," in back streets behind Holborn, in Borough 
courts and passages, in City wharfs or alleys, about 
the poorer lodging-houses, in prisons, workhouses, 
ragged-schools, police-courts, rag-shops, chandlers' 
shops, and all sorts of markets for the poor, he 
carried his keen observation and untiring study. 

His friend and biographer, John Forster, tells us 
that for several consecutive years he accompanied 
him every Christmas Eve to see the marketings for 
Christmas down the road from Aldgate to Bow ; 
and he further informs us Dickens had a surprising 
fondness for wandering about in poor neighbour- 
hoods on Christmas Day, past the areas of shabby 
genteel houses in Somers or Kentish Towns, and 
watching the dinners preparing or coming in. 



ITINERARY AND REFERENCES 
ROUTE FIFTEEN 

ALDGATE TO LIMEHOUSE 



Aldgate Pump 

Sketches : Shabby Genteel 
Nickleby, 41 
Dombey, 56 
Uncommercial, 3 

Saracen's Head Yard 

Uncommercial, 3 

Aldgate 

Pickwick, i 
Barnaby, 8 

Houndsditch Church 

(See also Route 14) 
Curiosity Shop, 36 
Two Cities, II, i 
Uncommercial, 34 

Minories, No. 156, "Little 
Wooden Midshipman " 

Dombey, 4 
Uncommercial, 3 
Reprinted : Down-tide 

America Square 

Message from Sea 

Aldgate Avenue (site of " Bull " 
Inn) 

Pickwick, 20, 22 

Aldgate High Street, No. 31 
(site of " Blue Boar ") 

Copperfield, 5 

Commercial Road 

Dombey, 9 
Uncommercial, 3 

Whltechapel Church 

Uncommercial, 3, 35 



Commercial Street 

Uncommercial, 23 

Brick Lane 

Pickwick, 33 

Whitechapel Workhouse 

Miscell. P. : Nightly Scene 

Shoreditch 

Twist, 21 

Standard Theatre 

Miscell. P. : Amusements 

Britannia Theatre 

Uncommercial, 4 

Bethnal Green Road 

Twist, 21 

Bethnal Green 

Twist, 19 
Mutual, III, 10 
Uncommercial, 10 

London Hospital 

Curiosity, 35 

Whitechapel 

Pickwick, 20, 22 
Twist, 19 
Cunosity, 35 
Barnaby, 4, 37 
Copperfield, 5 
Uncommercial, 3, 10, 34 
Carol, 3 

Mile End Gate 

Pickwick, 22 

Mile End Road 
Dombey, 4 



255 



256 



THE LONDON OF DICKENS 



Mile End 

Bleak, 14 
Barnaby, 61 

Vintners' Almhouses 

(" Titbull's ") 
Uncommercial, 27 

Stepney 

Uncommercial, 32 

Stepney Green 

Mutual, I, 15 

Bow 

Nickleby, 35, 40 

West India Docks 
Dombey, 9, 15 
Expectations, 45, 46 

Poplar 

Golden Mary 

Limehouse 

Dombey, 60 
Expectations, 45, 46 
Mutual, I, 36 ; II, 12 
Uncommercial, 29, 34 

Limehouse Church 

Mutual, I, 6 ; II, 13 
Uncommercial, 34 

Church Row 

Life 

Narrow Street 

Grapes Inn (Three Jolly 

Fellowship Porters) 
Mutual, I, 36 

Ratclifl 
Mutual, I, 3 ; II, 12 



Twist, 13 

Uncommercial, 32, 30 
Dombey, 23 

Shadwell 

Drood, i, 23 
Uncommercial, 20 

St. George's Street (formerly 
Ratcliff Highway) 

Sketches : Brokers' Shops 

Twist, 13 

Mutual, I, 3 ; II, 12 

Old Gravel Lane 
Uncommercial, 3 

Wapping 

Barnaby, 53 
Mutual, II, 12 
Uncommercial, 3 
Gone Astray 
Message from Sea 

London Docks 

Dorrit, I, 24 
Uncommercial, 20 

Wapping Workhouse 
Uncommercial, 3 

Wapping Old Stairs 
Uncommercial, 3 

Well Street 

Gone Astray 

Wellclose Square 

Gone Astray 

Goodman's Fields 

Gone Astray 



INDEX 



Page 

Abel Cottage 78 

Adelphi, The - 202-3, 2I 4 

,, Arches 202-3, 214 

Hotel - - 202, 214 

Terrace 202-3, 214 

Theatre - 27, 214 

Ailsa Park Villas - 194 

Albany, The - 164-5, 169 

Albion Hotel - - 50, 57 

Aldermanbury - - 59, 71 

Aldersgate Street 45, 49, 50, 57 

Aldgate - - 237-8, 254-5 

Pump 8, 53, 236-7, 255 

Aldwych ... - 88 

All Souls' Church - 154 

" All the Year Round " 

Offices - - 81, 197, 203 
Almacks - - - 184 

Almshouses : 

Bayham Street - 105 

Titbull's - ... 243 

America Square - - 237, 255 

Amwell Street 74 

Angel, The, Islington 

44. 67-70. 72-4 

Angel Court - - 118,129 

Anglo-Bengalee Offices - 173 

Archway, The 74 

Arlington Street - 68, 72 

Arundel Street - - 204, 215 

Astley's - 132, 145 

Athenaeum, The - 174, 184 

Austin Friars - 61, 71 

Badger, Bayham, Mr., 

House of - - 1 88 

Bagnet Family, House of 135 
Baker's, Trap, Mr. - - 249 
Ball's Pond - - 74, 80 
Bank of England 

52-4, 58-62, 218, 222 



Page 

Barbican - - 45, 60, 62, 71 
Barbox Bros., Office of - 230 
Bardell, Mrs., .House of - 65 
Barnacle, Tite, House of - 166 
Barnard's Inn - - 39, 56 
Barrow, Thomas, House of 158 
Bartholomew Close 49, 50, 57 
Battersea - - - 195 

Battle Bridge - 74, 101-2, 108 
Bayham Street 

81, 98, 104-5, 108 

Bazaar, Soho Square - 159 

Beadnell, Maria, House of 232-3 

Beak Street - - 161, 169 

Bedford Row 33 

Square - 148-9, 156 

Street - 196, 202, 214 

Belgrave Square - 187, 195 

Belgravia - - 187, 195 

Bell Alley - 62, 71 

,, Yard, Carter Lane 

212-3, 216 
,, Yard, Fleet Street 

25. 34. 215 

Belle Sauvage - - 211, 216 
Bentinck Street - - 153, 157 
Bermondsey - - 118, 129 
Berners Street - - 169 

Bethlehem Hospital 

115. 133. 135. M5 
Bethnal Green - - 241, 255 
,, Road 62, 241, 255 
Beulah Spa - - - 146 
Bevis Marks - 63, 224, 234 
Billikin's - - - - 37 
Billingsgate - - 230, 235 
Bishopsgate Street - 220, 234 
Black Bull, The 36, 41, 56 

Black Lion, The - 236, 242 
Blacking Warehouse 

no, 147, 196, 200-2 



257 



258 



INDEX 



Page 
Blackfriars 

8, no, 124, 128, 197, 210 

Bridge - iio-n, 128 

Road no, 128, 133, 135 

Blackheath 123, 138-9, 146 

Bleeding Heart Yard 43, 56 

Bloomsbury - 36-8 

Bloomsbury Square 37-8, 148, 156 

Blue Boar, Leadenhall 

Market - - - - 222 
Blue Boar, Whitechapel 

236-8, 255 

Boffin's Bower - - 102 

,, House, Mr. - 154 

Bond Street - 37, 165, 170 
Boot Tavern - 94- 5, 97 

Borough, The 8, no, 113, 

117-121, 129, 131, 254 

Clink - 129 

,, Compter - 129 

Market - 120, 129 

Boswell Court - - - 215 

Bouvene Street - 209, 216 

Bow 237, 240, 244, 254, 256 

Bow Church, Cheapside 58, 222 

Bow Street Police Station 

85-6, 96 

Bradley Headstone's School 1 36 
Brass, Sampson, House of 224 
Break Neck Stairs - - 225 
Brentford - - - 191, 195 
Brick Lane - 240, 255 

Bridewell - - - - 216 
Brig Place - - 244-5, 256 
Britannia Theatre - 241, 255 
British Museum 91, 97, 148 
Bnxton - - - 141, 146 
Broad Court - - 86, 96 
Street, City - - 71 
Street, Golden Square 162 
Brompton - - 187, 195, 254 
Brook Street - - 1 66, 170 
Brownlow, Mr., House of 67, 73 
Bryanston Square - 152, 157 
Buckingham Palace - 184 

Street 201-2, 214 

Bucklersbury - - - 58 
Bull Inn, Holborn 37, 41, 56 
Whitechapel 

236-238, 255 



Page 

Bull and Mouth, The 51, 57 

Burlington Arcade - - 170 

Gardens 165, 169 

(Old) Street - 169 

Cadogan Place - 187-8, 195 

Caen Wood - - 76-7, 80 

Camberwell - 140-1, 146 

Green 140, 146, 254 

Grove - 140, 146 

Camberlmg Town - 106 

Camden Town 

8, 63, 65, 98, 103, 105-9, 166 

Cannon Row - - - 176 

Cannon Street - - 230, 235 

Carker, James, House of - 143 

John, House of - 78 

Carlisle House - - 159 

Street - - 159, 169 

Carnaby Street - - - 162 

Carstone, Richard, Lodgings 

of 147 

Casby, Mr., House of - 14 
Castle Street - - 39, 56 
Cateaton Street - 60, 71 
Catherine Street - - 96 
Cavendish Square 153-4, 157 
Cecil Street - - 203, 214 
Chancery Lane 

21-23, 32-34, 39, 42, 66, 99 
Chandos Street - 196, 202, 214 
Change Alley - - - 234 
Chapman & Hall, Offices of 

82, 173, 204 
Charing Cross 

51, 131, 199-202, 214, 237 

Charterhouse, The - 16, 33 

Street 42-5 

Cheapside 51-2, 57, 229, 242 

Cheeryble Brothers, Office 

of 220-1 

Chelsea - - 186-9, 195 

Bun House - 188, 195 

Ferry - - - 189 

Reach - - 188, 195 

Cheshire Cheese, The - 209 

Chester, Mr., Chambers of 31 

Chichester Rents - 23, 34 

Chicksey Veneering & 

Stobbles, Offices of - 225 



INDEX 



259 



Page 

Children's Hospital, The 91-2, 97 
Ratcliff 248 

Chimes, Church of the - 209 

Chinks' s Basin - - - 245 

Chiswell Street - - 62, 71 

Chiswick - 191, 195 

Chivery, John, Shop of - 115 

Church House, Highgate - 75 

Church Row - - 246, 256 

Street - 181-2, 185 

Chuzzlewit's Offices - - 50-1 

Circumlocution Office 174-5, 185 

City of London - 52-5, 217-8 

City Road - 59, 63-5, 71 

Square - 220-1, 234 

Clapham - - - 142-3 

Clapham Common - 143, 146 

Green - 143, 146 

Rise - 142-3, 146 

,, Road - - 142, 146 

Clare Court - - - 88 

Market - - 34, 34 

Clarendon Square - 101, 108 

Clement's Inn - - - 215 

Clenham Street - - 113 

Clennam, Mrs , House of - 229 

Arthur, Rooms of 

62, 81-2 

Clerkenwell 16, 17, 33, 43, 44, 61 
Green - - 16 
Sessions House 16,33 
Square - 16, 33 
Gaol - 69, 72 
Road - 15, 16 
Cleveland Street 149-50, 156 
Clifford's Inn - 208-9, 215 
Clifford Street - - - 169 
Clink, Borough, The - 129 

Coavmses' Castle - 22 

Cobley's Farm - - - 78 
Cock Lane - - 46, 57 
Coleman Street - - 62, 71 
College Place - - 103, 1 08 
Street, Great - 103 
,, Little - 103, 108 
Commercial Road 238-9, 255 
Street 239-40, 255 
Compeyson, House of - 191 
Compter, Borough - 129 

Smithfield 46, 49, 57 



Page 

Cook's Court - - - 21 
Copenhagen House - 103, 108 
Coppice Row - 68-70, 72 

Coram Street - - 94. 97 
Cornhill - - 217-220, 234 
Covent Garden 

81-6, 96, 203, 217, 236 
Covent Garden Market 81-5, 96 
,, Theatre 

82-6, 96, 212-3 

Cratchit, Bob, House of - 105 
Craven Street - - 200, 214 
Crawford Passage - 70, 72 
Cripple Corner - - - 225 
Cnpples's, Academy, Mr. 114 
Crockford's - - 184 

Cromer Street - - 94-5, 97 
Crooked Billet, The - - 227 
Cross Keys, Wood Street 51, 58 
Crown, The, Beak Street 162 
Crown Street 62 

Cruikshank, George, House 

of 74 

Cruncher, Jerry, Lodgings 

of 210 

Crupp, Mrs , House of - 201 
Cursitor Street - - 21, 34 
Cuttle, Captain, Lodgings 

of - 244-5 

Custom House 125, 228, 235 
Cuttnss 1 Hotel 83 

" Daily News " Office 209, 216 
David Copperfield's Lodg- 
ings 114 

David Copperfield's Cottage 75 
Deaf and Dumb Establish- 
ment .... 136 
Dean's Court - - - 211 
Deptford - - - 137, 145 
Devonshire House - 172, 184 
Terrace - 150, 156 
Dickens's, Mrs., Establish- 
ment 99 
Dickens Fellowship, Offices 

of 208- 

Docks, The 236, 250-1, 256 

Dockhead - - - - 129 
Doctors' Commons 211-3, 2I ^ 
Dodson & Fogg Office of - 219 



260 



INDEX 



Page 

Doll's Dressmaker, House 
of 181 

Dombey, Mr., House of - 152 
Dombey & Son, Offices of 222-3 
Dorrit, Frederick, Lodg- 
ings of - - - - 114 
Dorrit, Little, Playground 113 
Dorrit Street - - 113 

Doughty Street 

^ , 8 ' y. * 4 ' 33 ' 4I ' I47 
Dover Road, The 131, 134, 145 

Doyce & Clennam, Rooms of 62 
Doyce & Clennam, Works 43 
Drouet's Paradise at Toot- 
ing 143 

Drummond Street 99-101, 108 

Drury Lane - 88-90, 96 

Theatre 87-90, 96 

Duke's Place - - 224, 234 

Duke Street - - 173, 184 

Duke of York's Column - 184 

Dulwich - - - 144, 146 

Church - 144, 146 

,, Gallery - 144, 146 

Dumps, Mr., Lodgings of 73 

Eagle, The - - 59, 63, 71 
East London Children's 

Hospital - - - - 248 
Edgware Road - 150-1, 156 
Eel Pie Island - - 194-5 
Elephant and Castle, The 

135. 145 

Elm Lodge, Petersham 192-3 
Ely Place ... 42, 56 
Essex Street - - 205, 215 
Euston Road - 95, 98-9 

Euston Square - - - 108 
Exchequer Coffee House - 180 
Exeter Hall - - 203, 214 
Exmouth Street 44, 68-9, 72 

Fagin's House 14 

Falcon Hotel - 50 

Fang, Mr., Office of - 15 

Farm House, The - 113,128 

Faningdon Hotel (The 

Fleet) - - - - 210 

,, Road - 69-70 

Street 46, *io, 216 



Page 

Feenix, Lord, House of - 166 

Fenchurch Street 224-5, 2 34> 2 37 

Fetter Lane - - 40, 57 

Field Court - - - 33 

Field Lane 36, 44, 56, 89 

Ragged School 16 

Fmchley - - - 78-80 

Finsbury - - - 62, 71 

Square - 62, 71 

Fips, Mr., Office of - - 61 

Fish Street Hill - 125, 129 

Fitzroy Square - - 149, 156 

,, Street ... 149 

Fledgeby, Mr., Chambers 

of 164 

Fleet, The 21, 62, 207, 

209-11, 213, 216 
Market - - 210, 216 
Street 14, 25, 26, 

32, 40, 196, 205-10, 215 
Flite, Miss, Lodgings of - 23 
Flower Pot, The - - 220 
Folly Ditch - - 124-5 
Forster, John, House of - 24 
Foundling Hospital, The 

92-3. 95. 97 *47 
Fountain Court 8, 27-31, 35 
Fox-under-the-Hill, The - 203 
Freeman's Court 52, 219, 234 
Freemasons' Tavern 90, 97 

Fresh Wharf - - 125, 129 
Fulham - - 189-90, 195 
Furnival's Inn 

14, 20, 35, 40-1, 56, 59, 204 
Furnival Street - - 39, 56 

Gamp, Mrs., House of - 38 
Garland, Mr., House of - 78 
Garden Court - 27-30, 35 

Garraway's - - 7, 218-9, 234 
Gateway, Doctors' Commons 212 
Gray's Inn 19, 33 

Lincoln's Inn 23, 34 
Temple 25, 32, 35 
Whitefriars 31, 35, 123 
General Post Office 50-1, 57, 155 
George Inn, Borough 120-1, 129 
George IV Tavern - 2 5, 34 
George, Mr., Shooting Gal- 
lery of - - - - 158 



INDEX 



261 



Page 
George and Vulture, The 

220, 231, 235 

George Yard - 220, 231, 235 
Gerrard Street - - 158, 169 
Giles, Jeremie & Giles, 

Office of - 230 

Giltspur Street - 46, 49, 57 
Glyn&Co. - 219 

Golden Cross, The 

51, 131, 199, 200, 214 
Golden Dog and Pot, The 

no-i, 128 

Golden Square 147, 162-4, 169 
Goldsmith Buildings - 32, 35 
Goodman's Fields - 253, 256 
Gordon, Lord George, 

House of - - 153 

Gosvvell Street - - 59, 65, 72 
Gower Street - 26, 98, 108 
Gracechurch Street - 229, 235 
Granby Street 99 

Grapes Inn, The - 246-7 
Gray's Inn 15, 17-19, 33-4, 39, 42 
Coffee House 19, 34 
Gardens - 17, 33 
Gateway - 19, 33 
Hall - 1 8, 19, 32 
Lane 15, 32, 68, 254 
Road 14, 15, 20, 

32, 102 

,, ,, Square - 17, 32 
Great College Street - 103 
Great Coram Street - 94, 97 
Great Ormond Street 91-2 

Great Queen Street 87, 90, 96 
Great Russell Street 

37, 9i, 97. M8, 156 

Green Lanes - - 150, 156 

,, Park - - 171, 184 

Street - - - 158 

Greenwich 

132, 134, 136-8, 145, 245 
Church 137-8, 145 
Fair - - - 145 
Hospital - 145 

Observatory 138, 145 
Park 138-9, 145 

Gresham Street - 60, 71 
Grewgious, Mr., House of 8, 21 
Grimaldi, House of - - 73 



Page 

Grocers' Hall Court - 52, 58 

Grosvenor Place 181, 184, 187 

Square 45, 167-8,170 

Grove Hall Park - - 244 

Guildhall, The - 52, 60- 1, 71 

Guilford Street - 92-3, 147 

Guppy, Mr. House, of 73, 135 

Mrs., House of - 63 

Guy's Hospital - 113, 121, 129 

Ham House - - 193, 195 
Hammersmith 

186, 190-1, 195, 254 



Hampstead 

Heath - 
Ponds - 
Road 

Hanbury Street 

Hanging Sword Alley 



76-8, 80 

- 77-8 

77 
8, 99, 108 

- 240 
210, 216 



Hanover Square 165-6, 170 

Rooms 165-6 

Harley Street - - *53> *57 
Harrow Street - - 113 

Hart Street, Bloomsbury 

37. 9i, 97 

Hart Street, City - 226, 235 

Harmony Jail - - 102 

Hatton Garden - 15, 33, 43, 44 

Wall - - 15, 33 

Yard - - 15, 33 

Haymarket - - 184 

Headstone, Bradley School 

of 136 

Heep, Uriah, Lodgings of 69 
Henrietta Street - - 82 
Hexam's House - 248 

Higden, Betty, House of - 191 
HighHolborn 38 

High Street, Borough 115-121 
High Street, Islington 3, 65-70 
Highbury Barn 80 

Highgate - 74-6, 80, 243, 254 
Archway - 74, 80 
Cemetery - 76, 80 
Church - 76, 80 
Hill - 74, 80 

Toll - - 74, 80 
Hockley-in-the-Hole 68, 70, 72 
Holborn 14, 20, 36-46, 56, 91, 147 
Court - 19, 33 



262 



INDEX 



Page 

Holborn Hill - 36, 42, 56 

Viaduct 36, 41, 56 

Holloway - 74, 80, 102, 254 

,, Road 74 

Honey Court 52 

Horn Coffee House - 213, 216 

Hornsey - 79-80 

Horse and Groom 25 

Horse Guards, The - 174, 185 

Horsemonger Lane - 115,128 

Jail - 115 

Hosier Lane - - 45-6, 57 

Hospital for Sick Children 

91-2, 97 

Hotel in Furnival's Inn - 40 
Hotels, Inns and Taverns 
Adelphi Hotel - 202, 214 
Albion Hotel, Aldersgate 

Street - - - 50, 57 
Angel, The, Islington 

44, 67-70, 72-4 
Belle Sauvage, Ludgate 

Hill - - - 211, 216 
Black Lion, Whitechapel 

236, 242 
Blue Boar, Whitechapel 

236-8, 255 
Blue Boar, Leadenhall 

Market - - - 222 
Boot, The - - 94-5, 97 
Bull Inn, Holborn 36, 41, 56 
Bull Inn, Whitechapel 

236, 238, 255 

Bull and Mouth - 51, 57 
Cheshire Cheese, The - 209 
Crooked Billet - - 227 
Cross Keys, Wood Street 51, 58 
Crown, The, Beak Street 162 
Cuttriss's Hotel - - 83 
Eagle, The, City Road 

59, 63, 71 

Exchequer Coffee House 180 
Falcon Hotel 50 

Flower Pot, The, 

Bishopsgate - - 220 
Fox-under-the-Hill - 203 
Freemasons' Tavern 90, 97 
Garraway's - 7, 218-9, 234 
George Inn, Borough 

120-1, 129 



Page 

George IV Tavern - 25, 34 
George and Vulture 

220, 231, 235 
Golden Cross, Charing 

Cross 51, 131, 199, 200, 214 
Grapes Inn - - 246-7 
Gray's Inn Coffee House 19, 34 
Highbury Barn 80 

Horn Coffee House 213, 216 
Horse and Groom, The 25 
Hummums Hotel - 83, 96 
Jack Straw's Castle 78, 80 
Jerusalem Coffee House 

218, 234 

London Coffee House 211, 216 
London Tavern - - 220 
Long's Hotel - - 165, 170 
Magpie and Stump 25, 34, 208 
Old Ship Tavern 23 

Osborne's Hotel - 202, 214 
Peacock, The - 67, 72 
Piazza Hotel - - 82-3, 96 
Prince of Wales's Hotel 158 
Rainbow Tavern - - 215 
Red Lion, Bevis Marks 224 
Red Lion, Highgate - 75 
Red Lion, Parliament 

Street - - - 176, 185 
Saracen's Head, Aldgate 

237> 255 
Saracen's Head, Snow 

Hill - - 36, 46, 57, 101 
Serjeants' Inn Coffee 

House - - - 209, 216 
Ship Hotel - - - 137 
Six Jolly FellowshiD 

Porters - - 246-7 
Sol's Arms, Chancery 

Lane - 23, 34 

Sol's Arms, Hampstead 

Road - * - - * 99 
Spaniards, The - 76-7, 80 
Star & Garter - 192, 195 
Tavistock Hotel - 82-3, 96 
Three Cripples 44 

Three Magpies - - 191 
White Hart - - 121, 129 
White Horse Cellars 171-2, 184 
Wood's Hotel - - 40 
White Swan - 202 



INDEX 



263 



Page 

Houses and Places where 
Dickens resided 

10 Norfolk Street - 149-150 
1 6 Bayham Street i4*5 

4 Gower Street North - 98-9 
37 Little College Street 103-4 
Lant Street - - 113-4 
Hampstead 78 

13 Johnson Street - 100 

Polygon - - - 1 01 

Fitzroy Street - 149 

10 Norfolk Street - 149-50 
Highgate 75 
1 8 Ben ti nek Street - 153 
Cecil Street - - -203 
15 Buckingham Street - 202 

15 Furmval's Inn - - 40 

1 1 Selwood Terrace, Ful- 
ham - 189 

48 Doughty Street - 14 

4 Ailsa Park Villas, 
Iwickenham - 194 

Elm Cottage, Petersham 192 
i Devonshire Terrace - 150 
Cobley's Farm, Fmchley 78 
9 Osnaburgh Terrace - 150 
i Chester Plac^, Regent's 

Park - 151 

Tavistock House 94 

Wylde's Farm, Hamp- 
stead 78 
26 Wellington Street - 203 
3 Hanover Terrace, Re- 
gent's Park - - 151 

1 6 Hyde Park Gate - 151 
57 Gloucester Place, 

Hyde Park - - 151 
1 6 Somers Place, Hyde 

Park - 151 

6 Southwick Place - 151 

5 Hyde Park Place - 151 
Houndsditch - 63, 224, 234 

Church 237-8, 255 
Houses of Parliament 176-7,185 
Howard Street - - 204, 215 
" Household Words," 

Office of - - - 197, 203 
Hoxton - - - - 241 
Huggin Lane - 52, 58, 60 
Hummums Hotel - 83, 96 



Page 

Hungerford Bridge - no, 196 

Market 200-?, 214 

Stairs 1 49, 200-2, 214 

Hyde Park 147, 150-2, 156 

,, Corner 

155, 168, 170-1, 186 
Place 8, 151, 157 

India Docks - 244-5, 256 
India House 223-4, 234, 236 
Inner Temple - - - 31-2 
Inner Temple Gate 32, 35, 208 
Inns of Court - 13-32, 66 

Insolvent Court - - 25, 34 
Iron Bridge, The - 8, 112 
Islington - 59, 65-70, 72-4 

Jack Straw's Castle - 78, 80 
acob's Island - 124-5, 129 
Jaggers, Mr., Office - 49, 50 
,, House of - 159 

James Street - - 162 

ellyby, Mrs., House of - 42 
,, Lodgings of 15 
Jerusalem Coffee House 218, 234 
Johnson's Court - 209, 216 
Johnson Street - 8, 100, 108 
Jorkins, Mr., House of - 153 

Ken Wood - - 76-7, 80 

Kenge & Carboy, Office of 23-4 

Kennington - 135, 142, 146 

Oval - - 146 

Kensington - - 157, 191 

Gardens - 157 

Kent Road - 135-6, 145 

Kent Street - - - 128 

Kentish Town - - 109, 254 

Kenwigs Family, House of 162 

Kew - 191, 195 

Kew Bridge - - 191, 195 

King Street, Cheapside 52, 71 

,, Co vent Garden 96 

St. James's - 184 

King's Bench Prison 114, 128 

Walk - 31, 35 

Kings Cross 65, 73, 102-3, 108 

Kingsgate Street 38, 56 

Kingsway 36 



264 



INDEX 



Page 
Kitterbell, Mr., House of 

37, 91, 148 

Knag, Mr., House of - 149 
Krook's Shop 23 

La Creevy, Miss, House 

of 197, 203, 215 

Lad Lane 58 

Lady James's Folly - 139 

Lambeth - - 133, 145, 181 
Lammle, Mr., House of - 164 
Langdale's Distillery 39, 40, 56 
Langham Place - 154, 157 
Lant Street no, 113-4, I28 > J 33 
Lead Mills, Limehouse - 246 
Leadenhall Market - 222, 234 
Street 

221-3, 234, 237, 242 

Leather Lane - - 15, 32 

Leicester Fields - 158, 169 

Place - - 158, 169 

,, Square - 158, 169 

Lightwood, Mortimer, 

Chambers of - - - 32 
Limehouse 236, 245-8, 256 

,, Church - 246, 256 
Hole - 247-8 
Lincoln's Inn - 13,34,172 
Chapel 23, 34 

Fields 24, 34 

Garden - 34 
Gateway 23, 34 
Hall 23, 34, 177 
Lirriper, Mrs., House of 202, 204 
Little Britain - - 49, 57 
College Street - 103, 108 
Little Donit's Playground 113 
Little Gosling Street - 250 
Little Wooden Midship- 
man, The 222-4, 2 37 2 55 
Lombard Street 220, 229-33, 235 
London Bridge 

119, 121-5, 129, 131, 181, 227 

London Bridge Steps 122, 129 

Station - 129 

London Coffee House 211,216 

Docks - 250-1, 256 

Hospital 241-2, 255 

Tavern - - 220 

Wall - 60,62,71 

Long Acre - - 87, 90, 96 



Long Lane - 
Long's Hotel 
Lothbury - 
Lowther Arcade 
Ludgate 

Hill - 
Lyceum Theatre 
Lyon's Inn 



Page 
62, 71 

- 165, 170 

60, 71 

- - 196 
- 216 

2IO-I, 216 

- 203, 215 

- - 215 



MacStinger, Mrs., House of 

244-5 
Magpie and Stump, The 

25, 34, 208 

Maiden Lane - - 102, 108 
Malderton, Mr., House of 140 
Manchester Buildings - 182 
Manette, Dr., House of 159-60 
Manette Street - - 159 

Mansfield, Lord, Houses of 

76, 148 

Mansion House - - 52-4, 58 
Mantalini, Mrs., Houses 

of - - - - 91, 154 
Marlborough Street, Great 

161, 169 

Marble Arch - - 151-2 
Mark Lane - - 224-6, 234 
Marsh Gate, Lambeth 133, 145 
Marshalsea Place - - 118 

Prison 
7, 99, 103, no-i, 

116-19, 129, 134 
Road 113, 128, 166 
Marylebone Church - 150, 156 
Metropolitan Police Office 15 
Meagles, Mr., House of 193-4 
Mecklenberg Square - - 147 
Merdle, Mr., House of - 153 
Mews Street - - 166-7 
Micawber, Mr., Residences 

of 14, 6^, 105 

Middle Temple - - 14, 35 

,, Gate 25, 35, 208 

,, ,, Lane - 30 

Mile End - 243, 256 

,, ,, Gate - - 243, 255 

,, ,, Road - - 240, 255 

Millbank 180, 182, 185, 197 

Mill Lane - - - - 125 

Mill Pond - - - - 125 



INDEX 



265 



Page 

Mill Pond Bank - 245-6 
Mincing Lane - 224-6, 234 
Minerva House - - - 191 
Minns, Mr., Residence of - 82 
Minories - 223, 237, 255 

Mint, Old - 128 

The 59, 235 

Monmouth Street - 91, 97 

Montague Place - - 148, 156 

Square - 153, 157 

Monument 60, 124-6, 130, 

226, 228, 230 

,, Yard - 127, 130 
Moorfields - 62, 63, 71, 224 
Moorgate Street - - 61 
Morfin, Mr., House of - 66 
" Morning Chronicle " Office 196 
Mormngton Place - 100 

Mould, Mr., Premises of - 51 
Mount Pleasant - - 69, 72 
Murdstone & Gnnby's 

Warehouse - - in 

Mutton Hill - - 15, 33 

Nanby, Mr, Office of - 62 
Narrow Street - 256 

New Cut - 133, 145 

Inn - - - - 34 
Oxford Street - - 91 
River Head - 69, 72 
Road - 187 

Square - - 24, 34 
Newgate 36, 44-9, 57, 66, 151,177 
Market - 37, 57 
Street 48, 57, 229 

Newman Street - 159, 161, 169 
Nickleby, Mrs., Cottage of 244 
,, Ralph, House of 163 
Wharf of 228-9 
Norfolk Street, Fitzroy 

Square - - 149-50, 156 
Norfolk Street, Strand 204, 215 
North End - - - 77-8 
Northumberland House 

I75 196, 200, 214 
Norwood - - 143-4, I 4^ 

Oak Lodge ... 140 
Obelisk, The 115, 132-4, 145 
Obenreizer, House of -159 



Observatory, The - - 138 
Old Bailey - 36, 47-8, 57 

Old Curiosity Shop, The 

25, 34, 158 

Old Gravel Lane Bridge 249, 256 
Old Green Copper Rope 

Walk .... 245 
Old Kent Road - - 136, 145 
Old Monthly Magazine 

Office - - - 196, 209 
Old Pancras Road - 103 

Old Ship Tavern - - 23 
Old Square - - 23-4, 34 
Old Street Road - - 62-3, 71 
Opera Colonnade - 184 

Opium Den ... 249 
Ormond Street, Great - 91-2 
Osborne's Hotel - 202, 214 
Osnaburgh Terrace - - 156 
Oxford Street 

147. I5I-5. 157. 161, 167 

Oxford Street, New - - 91 

Market - 155, 157 

P.J.T. House - - - 8, 21 
Palace Yard, Old - 180, 185 
Pall Mall - 173-4,184,240 
Panks, Mr., Residence of 73 
Pancras Road 101, 103, 108 

Paper Buildings - 31, 35 
Park Lane 152, 165, 167-8, 170 
Parliament, Houses of 176-7, 185 
Parliament Street - 176,185 
Peacock, The - - 67, 72 
Pear Tree Court - - 16 
Peckham - - - 140, 146 
Rye - 146 

Peggotty, Mr., Lodgings of 201 
Penton Place - - 73-4, 80 

Street - - 73-4, 80 

Pentonville 65-70, 73-4, 80 

Hill - - 14 

Perker, Mr., Chambers of - 17 

,, House of - 148 
Petersham - 186, 192-3, 195 
Phunky, Mr., Chambers of 19 
Piazza Hotel - - 82-3, 96 
Piccadilly 151, 171. 181, 184 
Hotel - - 172 
Pickwick, Mr,, Lodgings - 65 



266 



INDEX 



Page 

Pickwick, Mr., House of - 144 
Pinch, Tom, Lodgings of - 66 
Pip's Chambers - - 39 
Pleasant Place, Finsbury 71 
Plornish, House of - - 43 
Pocket, Mr., House of - 190 
Podsnap, Mr., House of - 153 
Police Office, Hatton Garden 1 5 
Police Court, Bow Street 85 

Great Marl- 
borough Street - - 161 
Polygon, The - - 100, 108 
Pool, The - 245 

Poor Jo's Churchyard 89-90 
Poplar - - - 246, 256 
Poplar Walk - - 74, 221 
Portland Place - - 152, 157 
Portland Street, Great 155, 157 
Portman Square - 153, 157 
Portsmouth Street - 25, 34 
Portugal Street - - 25, 34 
Poultry ... 52, 58 
Prince of Wales Hotel - 158 
Pubsey & Co., Offices of - 224 
Pump Court - - 31,35 
Putney - - 189-90, 195 
Heath - - - 189 

Quadrant, The - - 169 

Quality Court - - - 34 
Queen Charlotte's Hospital 156 
Queen Square - - 147, 156 
Street, Great 87, 90, 96 
Queen's Theatre 87 

Quilp's House - - - 227 
Quilp Street - - 113 

Quilp's Wharf - - 124, 129 

Rainbow Tavern - - 215 

Ranelagh Gardens - 188,195 

Ratcliff - - 248-50, 256 

Highway 249, 254, 256 

Raymond Buildings - 17,33 

Red Lion, Bevis Marks - 224 

Highgate - - 75 

Parliament St. 

176, 185 

Square - 39, 56 

Regent's Canal - - - 156 

Park - - 150, 156 



Page 

Regent Street - 161, 169 

Richmond - 191-2, 195 

Riderhood, Rogue, House 

of 247-8 

Rokesmith's Cottage - 139 
Rolls Yard and Chapel 23, 34 
Roman Bath - 77, 204, 215 
Rood Lane - - 226, 235 
Rose Villa - - - 142 

Rosebery Avenue 68 

Rotherhithe - - 129, 250 
Rowland Hill's Chapel no-i, 128 
Royal Academy of Music 166 
Royal Exchange, The 

52-4, 58, 217, 222 

Rules, The - - 114-5, 128 

Russell Court - - 89, 96 

Square - 93, 147, 156 

Street - 83, 85, 87 

Great 
37, 91, 97, 148, 156 

Sackville Street - 164, 169 
Sadlers Wells Theatre 68, 70, 72 
Saffron Hill 43-4, 56, 68, 72 
St. Andrew's Church 42, 56, 89 
,, Bartholomew's Church 49 
,, Hospital 45, 49, 57 
,, Botolph's Church 237-8 

, , Clement Danes Church 



Dunstan's Church 



204, 215 



207, 209, 215 
George's Church, Bor- 
ough - 8, 113-8, 128 
George's Church, Cam- 

berwell - - 141 
George's Church, Han- 
over Square - 165 
George's Church, Hart 

Street - 37, 91, 97 
George's Circus 133, 135, 145 
Fields 

132-3, 145, 183 

Street - 249, 256 

Ghastly Grim - 226-7 

Giles's Church - 90-1,97 

James's Church - 172, 184 

Hall - 172,184 

Palace 37 



INDEX 



267 



Page 

St. James's Park - 175, 185 
Square 173-4, 184 
Street - 173, 184 
John's Church - 185 

Road (Street) 

44, 65, 67-8, 72 
, Luke's Church 186, 189, 195 
Workhouse 63-4, 71 
, Magnus' Church - 129 

, Martin's Church - 198,214 
Court - - 214 
Hall - 87, 97 
Lane - 198-9 
, ,, le-Grand 51, 57 

, Mary Axe - 224, 234 

, Mary-le-Strand Burial 

Ground 89 

, Mary-le- Strand Church 

204, 215 

,, Michael's Alley - - 220 
,, Nicholas' Church - - 76 
,, Olave's Church 226-7, 2 35 
,, Pancras' Church, New 

93, 95> 97 
Old 103, 108 

,, ,, Workhouse 103, 108 
Paul's Cathedral 45, 49, 50, 

53, 105, in, 2ii, 216, 229 
Paul's Churchyard 211-2, 216 
,, Peter's Church - 221, 234 
Saviour's Church - 122, 129 
,, Sepulchre's Church 46-9, 57 
Salem House - - 138-9 
Saracen's Head, Snow Hill 

36, 46, 57, 101 
Aldgate 

237. 255 

Sardinia Street Chapel - 34 
Sausage Factory, Celebrated 48-9 
Savile Row - - 164-5, l &9 
Sawyer, Bob, Lodgings of no 
Scotland Yard - 175-6, 185 
Selwood Terrace 186, 189, 195 
Serjeants' Inn - - 209, 216 
Serpentine, The - - 185 
Seven Dials - 90-1, 97 

Severndroog Castle - 139, 146 
Seymour Street Chapel 101, 108 
Shadwell - 236, 248-9, 256 
Shaftesbury Avenue - 91, 159 



Page 

Ship Hotel - - - - 137 
Shoe Lane 44, 216 

Shooter's Hill - 138-9, 146 
Shoreditch - 241, 255 

Silver Street - - 162, 169 
Six Jolly Fellowship Por- 
ters - 246-7 
Skewton, Mrs., House of 166 
Skimpole, Harold, House 

of 101 

Skittles, Sir Barnet, House 

of 1*89-90 

Sloane Street - - 187,195 
Small Star in the East, The 248 
Smallweed, Mr., House of 69 
Smith, Payne & Smith 

61, 219, 231-2 

Smith Square - 181-2, 185 
Smithfield 44-6, 49, 56, 62, 68 
Snagsby, Mr., House of - 21-2 
Snawley, Mr , House of - 100 
Snow Hill - 36, 46, 56, 101 

Snubbin, Serjeant, Cham- 
bers of - - - - 24 
Soho - - 91, 158-61, 169 
Soho Square 17,147,159,169 
Sol's Arms, The - 23, 34, 99 

Somers Place - - 151 

Somers Town 100, 108, 147, 254 
Somerset House - 204, 215 
Southampton Row 91, 93, 148 
Street 37, 56, 82 
South Grove, Highgate 75, 80 
South Square - - 19, 33 
Southwark - - 123, 124, 129 
Bridge 

8, 112, 117, 128 
Road 112, 128 
Southwick Place - - 151 
Spaniards, The - - 76-7, 80 
Spa Fields - 69, 72 

Spenlow & Jorkins, Office 

of 212 

Spenlow, Mr., House of 143-4 

Misses, House of 190 

Spigwiffin's Wharf - 228-9 

Staggs' Gardens 106-7, 109 

Stamford Hill - - 74, 80 

Standard, The, Cornhill - 220 

Theatre - 241, 255 



268 



INDEX 



Page 

Staple Inn - 20-1, 34, 39, 41 
Star and Garter, Rich- 
mond ... 192, 195 
Star Yard 23 

Statue at Charing Cross 200, 237 
Steerforth, Mrs., House of 75 
Stepney . . - 256 

Green - - 244, 256 
Stock Exchange, The 61, 71, 237 
Stoke Newington 80 

Strand 14, 25, 26, 77, 81, 

87. 153. 175, 196-205, 214 

Bridge - - 204, 215 

Lane - - 204, 215 

Strong, Dr., House of - 75 

Stryver, Mr., Chambers of 31 

Sun Court - - - 219, 234 

,, Street - 62, 71 

Surgeons' Hall - - - 34 

Surrey Street - - 204, 215 

Theatre - - 135, 145 

Swallow Street 153, 164, 169 

Sweedlepipe, Poll, House 

of 38 

Swiveller, Dick, Lodgings of 88 

,, ,, Cottage - 77 

Symond's Inn - - 22, 34 

Tabard Street - 128 

Tartar, Mr., Chambers of 21 

Tavistock Hotel - 82-3, 96 

House - 94, 97 

,, Square 26, 94, 97 

Street - 82, 96 

Tellsons Bank - - 206, 215 

Temple, The 8, 13, 25-32, 35, 123 

Bar 25, 197-8, 205-7, 215 

Church - 30, 32, 35 

. Gardens - 31, 35 

Gates 25, 32, 35, 83, 208 

Stairs - 31, 35, 228 

Tenterden Street - 166,170 

Thames, The 30, 31, 121-5, 

137, 175, 190 
Embankment 

13, 14, no 
Street 

60, 225, 228-30, 235 
Thavies Inn - - 42, 56 
Theobald's Road 14,17,148 



Page 

Threadneedle Street - 222, 234 
Three Cripples, The - - 44 
Magpies, The - - 191 
Tibbs, Mrs., Boarding House 94 
Tigg, Montague, Chambers 173 
Tippins, Lady, Residence 

of 187 

Titbull's Almshouses 243, 256 
Tite Barnacles, House of 166-7 
Todgers's Boarding House 126-7 
Toll House, Blackfriars - in 
Tom-all-alones - 88-9 

Took's Court - - 21-2, 34 
Tooting - - - 143, 146 
Tottenham Court Road 

148-9, 156 

Tower, The 119, 227-8, 235, 253 
,, Hill - 124, 227, 235 
,, Street - 225-7, 2 34 
Stairs - - - 235 
Traddles, Thomas, Cham- 
bers of - 19 
Lodgings of 39, 105 
Trafalgar Square - - 198 
Trinity House, The 227, 235 
Turnstile - 39, 56 

Tulkinghorn, Mr., House of 24 
Tupman, Mr., Lodgings of 192 
Turnham Green - - 191, 195 
Turveydrop's Academy - 161 
Twemlow's House - 173 

Twickenham - 186, 193-5 
Tyburn - 151, 156 



Union Road 
Street 



115, 128 

III-2, 128 



Vale of Health 77 

Varden, Gabriel, House of 16, 17 

Vauxhall - - 121, 181, 185 

Bridge - 181, 185 

Gardens - 181, 185 

Venus, Mr., Shop of - - 17 

Verulam Buildings 33 

Veterinary Hospital 

103, 105, 108 

Vholes, Mr., Chambers of 22-3 
Victoria Theatre - 133, 145 
Vine Street - - 16, 33 
Vintners' Almshouses 243, 256 



INDEX 



269 



Page 

Walcot Square - - 135. *45 
Walmers, Mr., House of - 139 
Walworth - - H 1 ' 2 ' M^ 
Wappmg - - 249-52*256 
Wapping Old Stairs - 252, 250 
;, Workhouse 252, 256 
Warren's Blacking Ware- 
house no, 147, 196. 200-2 
Warwick Street - 162, 169 
Waterbrook, Mr., House of 42 
Waterloo Bridge 181, 203, 215 
Place - - 174. l8 4 
Road - - 133, J 45 
Station - 133. *45 
Waxworks in Fleet Street 

207, 215 

Webb's County Terrace I35~ 6 
Welbeck Street - - 153. J 57 
Well Street - - 253,256 
Wellclose Square - 253, 256 
Weller, Tony, Public House 

of 139 

Wellington House Academy 

100, 108 
Wellington Street 

81, 8$, 197. 2 3> 2I 5 

Wemmick, House of - M*' 2 

West India Docks 244-6, 256 

Westlock, John, Chambers 

of ----- 

Westminster - 121, 163, ii 

Abbey 177-9, 185 



Page 
Westminster Bridge 

123, 131-2, 182-3, 185 
Bridge Road 132 
Westminster Hail 

40, 176-7, 185, 197 
Whitechapel 123, 236-42, 255 
Church 239, 255 
Workhouse 240,255 
White Conduit House 73. 8o 
Whitecross Street - - 7* 
Whitefnars - 3 1 . 2IO 2l6 
Gate 31, 35. I2 3 
Whitehall - - i74~5 ^5 
Place - 175. I 8 5 
White Hart - - I 2 L "9 
White Horse Cellars, The 

171-2, 184 

Swan, The - - 2 * 
Whittington Stone - 8, 74-5 
Wilding & Co., Warehouse 

of ----- 22 5 
Wilfer Family, House of - 102 
Wimpole Street - - *57 
Windsor Terrace - 63-5, 72 
Wine Office Court - 209, 216 
Woburn Place - - 93. 97 
Wood Street - - 5 1 . 5 s 
Wood's Hotel 4 

Wren, Jenny, House of - 181 
Wylde's Farm 7 8 

York Road - IOI '3 



SECOND EDITION 

THE INNS AND TAVERNS 
OF PICKWICK 

With some observations on their other associations 

By B. W. MATZ 

Editor of The Dtckensian 
With 31 illustrations. Large crown 8vo. 10s. 6d. net. 

" The Author's task has obviously been a pleasant one, and he has once 
more earned the gratitude of all the numerous lovers of Dickens's most famous 
book " Times Literary Supplement 

"Mr B. W. Matz deserves handsomely of his fellows I have enjoyed a 
long evening making an arm-chair pilgrimage with him, and can warmly recom- 
mend other Dickens lovers to do likewise . this friendly entertaining book." 
The Bookman 

" Of living Pickwickians, Mr B W. Matz is now the acknowledged leader , 
and his jolly, glowing book is a worthy tribute to a lifelong loyalty. It is a 
Pickwickian book in every sense ; it glitters with old glass tumblers smoking 
with cordial ; its board gioans under the weight of good English barons of beef ; 
its four-post bedsteads are the shrine of golden dreams of an era of convivial 
hospitality. ... Mr Matz loves hib subject as well as he knows it, and writes 
of it with a jovial spirit. This will be a great book for Dickensians, a favourite 
present this winter "Daily Tekgraph 

DICKENSIAN INNS AND 
TAVERNS 

By B. W. MATZ 

Author of "The Inns and Taverns of Pickwick " 
With 39 illustrations. Demy 8vo. 10 /6 net. 

" The book is warm-hearted, comfortable and complete. . . . It is a treasure- 
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Dickens. This is a rich and various book, packed with knowledge and aglow 
with enthusiasm." Daily Telegraph 

11 Mr Matz has in his book performed a service for which all true lovers of 
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" A delightful volume " Aberdeen Free Press 

" This volume and that on the ' Inns of Pickwick ' are the final word m 
that region of literary exploration. There is nothing more to discover" 
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" All lovers of Dickens will want this book because it puts a living touch to 
all the mental imagery associated with the famous author's name." Newsagent. 

LONDON : 
CECIL PALMER, 49 CHANDOS STREET, W.C.2 



FACSIMILE OF FIRST EDITION (1843) 

A CHRISTMAS CAROL 

By CHARLES DICKENS 

With four coloured illustrations and four woodcuts by 

JOHN LEECH. 

Introduction by G K. CHESTERTON, and a Preface by B W. 

MATZ. With three facsimile reproductions from the MS. 

Fcap 8vo, cloth, gilt edges. 6/- net. 

" A possession every book-lover would naturally desire to add to his shelf." 
Daily Telegraph. 

" It is a beautifully produced and charming; little volume " Bookman 

" The whole is very well done and very soothing to the mmd The book 
will have a large sale It will keep the lamp of love alight " British Weekly 

11 A very charming and beautiful book." Bookseller. 

The Charles Dickens Calendar 

A Quotation for Every Day of the Year 
Compiled by B W. MATZ. 

Fcap. 8vo 2s net 

" Mr Matz has laid the works of Dickens under contribution, and gathered 
into this tastefully produced little book some memorable quotations for every 
day in the year ; he has cast his net and hab jewelled his pages with sayings that 
are serious or humorous, fanciful, touched with gracious sentiments or shrewdly 
wise. A capital book to dip into, always with surety of finding on any day of 
the year some thought that is worth thinking again, some words that are worth 
remembering "The Bookman. 

RE-ISSUE WITH NEW ATTRACTIVE COVERS 
THE CHARLES DICKENS CHRISTMAS 
BOOKLETS 

A Series of some of the lesser-known little masterpieces of 
Dickens, printed in dainty form. Illustrated in black and 
white and colour by Doris M. Palmer. Is. 6d. net each. 

(1) THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS 

(2) A CHRISTMAS TREE ; AND WHAT CHRISTMAS is AS 

WE GROW OLDER. 

(3) A CHILD'S DREAM OF A STAR ; AND THE HOLLY TREE. 

(4) HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 

These dainty booklets should be in great demand during the Christmas season 
as pleasant and agreeable little reminders of friendship. 

THE DICKENSIAN: a Quarterly Magazine for 
Dickens Lovers 

(Established 1905.) Edited by B. W. MATZ. Illustrated. 
Price Is. net ; Yearly volumes 7s. net. 

" The Dickensian " is now in its eighteenth year. It is devoted entirely to 
all phases of Dickens's life and writings and circulates amongst the lovers of 
Dickens all over the world. It contains articles by the best authorities, poems 
and pictures, and is the official record of the Dickens Fellowship 

LONDON: CECIL PALMER, 49 CHANDOS STREET, W.C.2
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